Reviews

One of my five favorite episodes. Dragnet often featured troubled teenagers and the difficulties these teenagers presented to their parents, to neighbors, to teachers and to the police. On most episodes these troubled teens were involved with drugs, but in the two "troubled teens" episodes I'd rate highest, this one and the third season episode "The Joy Riders", drugs were never mentioned or even hinted at.

The two episodes were similar: in each, the teen villains sprouted from fairly good homes; both had parents who at least seemed to be trying to keep them in line. In each case, the parents were out of their depth—one boy had a wishy-washy Momma who didn't want to face facts and a step father who didn't want to push his authority too hard, and the other had a single mom when he needed a tough father who'd give him an occasional shot upside the snoot. In this one, Gerald was a psycho; in the other, Harold was a punk. The Dragnet show featured a lot of bad acting from teen aged or young adult actors, but what made these two episodes stand out from the other "troubled teen" episodes, is that the acting from the young actors playing the "troubled teens" was actually very good.

In this one, the kid playing Gerald, a Jack Webb favorite named Mickey Sholdar, was almost perfect. In his early scenes, he played nice and polite with his parents & with Friday and Gannon, and managed a neat trick by being convincingly unconvincing. What I mean is that in his interview with the cops, he seems perfectly contrite about the consequences of his acid attack on a fellow teen. He's saying things like "Gee whiz, officer, I didn't mean to hurt him. I just threw acid at him. I didn't think that could do any harm,", and offering to make nice to the kid he threw acid at by paying for his damaged clothes. While he's making his excuses and his promises to be a good boy from now on, you get a neat little bit of acting from Friday & Gannon as they give each other the knowing eye, as if saying, without words, "this kid's full of sh-t."

Later on, Gerald crashes a party being held by kids from his school, and threatens the gang with a grenade. He yells, scream, rants and goes into apoplectic hysterics. We see this in other Dragnet episodes and it comes off hokey (especially with younger actors), but in this scene it's completely convincing. There's no ham in it at all. If there had been, it would have ruined the show and turned it into "camp". There are a lot of scenes in these old Dragnets, you watch them now and you get a laugh, even when it's not intended. This isn't one of them

An interesting sidelight, why I gave the title I did to this review. Jack Webb did NOT like the name "Gerald" or "Jerry". I've watched a lot of the older shows (from the 50s) and listened to all the available Dragnet radio shows. There was an episode, I can't remember if it was an early TV or a radio show (might have been both, as Webb wasn't shy about reusing scripts) in which Friday & Frank Smith were tracking a criminal whose first name was Gerald. When a lady they're interviewing says, "Gerald. I hate the name Gerald. What kind of name is that for a man?", it's obvious that she's not merely reading a script, but she's speaking for Jack Webb. And I find that in Dragnet, like this episode, or in a later episode, from the fourth season, when Friday, taking a college class, arrests a wise guy pot head named "Jerry", Geralds or Jerrys on Dragnet are bad news. Jack Webb didn't like the name, so he tagged in onto unsavory characters on his show.

John Fox Jr.'s novel "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" was an enormous best seller in the early years of the 20th Century and was made into a movie several times, but I think this was the last version, way back in 1936. The fact that it was made 4 times (I believe) within a little over 25 years of the book's publishing date and hasn't been redone in the almost 80 years since would seem to indicate that the story is dated. Also, that this once very popular novel is not read anymore.

Well, actually, I read it and I think it still holds up well. It's an affecting piece of fiction, very well written, but there's one big problem with it for modern audiences. The main relationship in the story is a close friendship between a grown up man and a young hillbilly girl. I'm not quite sure what the girl's age is at the beginning of the story, but I'm guessing it's around 12 years old. You could tell such a story innocently in 1908, but you can't now. It would simply be impossible. And you couldn't film it as it's written in the book. In the book, the relationship is completely innocent, without a hint of anything sinister, but modern audiences would read a sinister motive behind every action of the story's hero.

The film, however, is actually nothing like the book. The filmmakers take the names of the characters and the setting and situation of the book and make a completely different story out of it. I'm sure this is highly irritating to those who love the book (if anyone still does), but it doesn't ruin the movie, at least not for me. Maybe because I saw the movie before I read the book. I look at them as two completely different entities that happen to share superficial similarities.

In the film, the girl is played by Sylvia Sidney, who is certifiably an adult from the beginning. This not only changes the story, but eliminates anything sinister modern audiences might find in her friendship, and later romance, with the hero, played by Fred MacMurray. Both these roles would seem oddly cast. Sylvia Sidney, a native of the Bronx, is hard to imagine as anything other than the city girl, which she usually played, in films like "Dead End" or "Street Scene" or City Streets". Yet ignoring what you know of her usual roles, and your expectations based on this knowledge, she does a good job in the part. Same goes with MacMurray. This was early in his career, before he had become known as a light comedian and occasional heel. His character actually has a lot less to do in the movie than in the book, and MacMurray does well with what he has.

I'm not a Henry Fonda fan, finding him often preachy & whiny, but as this was early in his career, before he made films a political platform, I thought he did very well with his part, and made what was a secondary character in the book really the male lead in the picture. But his character is nothing like the same-named character in the book, who is younger, meaner, ignorant, inarticulate— almost a villain. The supporting cast was very good. Robert Barrat, one of my favorite character actors, who almost always had very small parts but always made them pay off, is terrific in a couple of short scenes. Same goes with Alan Baxter. Spanky, from Our Gang, has a big part in the picture, and it's peculiar to see him playing serious, but he pulls it off OK. Also, from the Our Gang angle, I could swear one of the other hillbilly kids is Mary Ann Jackson. She is in a couple of very brief shots and you'll miss her if you don't look quick. She is not listed in the cast, nor is this film listed in her filmography. if it's not her, it's a girl who looks exactly like her and there couldn't be two faces like that! Also must give a mention to famous vaudevillian Fred Stone as head of one of the feuding hillbilly clans. Stone, on stage, was known as a comedian and eccentric dancer, but in pictures he seemed always cast, as in this film, as a put-upon old man carrying heavy burdens and on the edge of tragedy (for example, Alice Adams). He acts his part well and even gets to do a stunt with a wagon wheel that called on his old time dexterity as a physical comedian.

It's sentimental, but without being hokey. The color is fantastic for what was really an experimental film. I recommend it, but don't expect it to be anything like the book.

I'll start out by saying I'm a fan of old, classic films and don't watch new movies at all. As a matter of fact, this is the most recent movie I've ever seen. I watched it because I am interested in the history of the space program, was a space junkie when I was a kid, and am old enough to vividly recall the entire event of Apollo 13. I am not familiar with the actors in the film, who, from reading other reviews, are big names to movie fans. So I come to the film uninfluenced by my like or dislike of the actors, which often distorts one's view of a film, and I watched it mainly to see how "right" they "got it".

I think they mostly got it right. Visually, the film is beautiful. Having lived through the time myself, I think they got the look of the period perfectly. This isn't always easy to do, and the filmmakers should be credited with their dedication to accuracy. Hollywood hasn't always been so vigilant, even on such relatively recent events. One need only watch a 1940's film depicting the 1920's, to see how the filmmakers feel the need to "modernize" styles, not trusting the audience to "get it", that it's a period piece. Cars, furniture, houses, clothes, hair styles, everything looks right in this picture. If you have a disposition towards accuracy, the research needn't be that deep—just dig up a 1970 Sears Catalog; but even this effort often seems too much for Hollywood.

Same with all the rocket stuff. I'm not an engineer or scientist, but I have a fair layman's knowledge of the Apollo gear, from 40+ years of interest in the subject, and I didn't notice any glaring mistakes. I'm sure there were some, but you'd have to be annoyingly obsessive to be offended by, or to even notice, them.

A couple of things bugged me, striking me as hokey. First, was the argument between Haise & Swigert in the LEM. I guess this was added to create dramatic tension. I suppose you need this to make it a "story" instead of a documentary, but it is simply not credible. Second was the part at the end when TK Mattingly takes over as CapCom during the reentry. This scene smacked of old time Hollywood bathos, and I wasn't buying it. Third, making Grumman the goat in a couple of scenes where an unnamed Grumman executive is depicted as being hesitant, obstructive and noncommittal. I guess every movie needs a villain and it's easy to pick a now non-existent corporate entity to be the villain in a film where everybody else bonds together in a spirit of cooperation, but it's a libel on the company that, after all, built the spacecraft that saved the crew's lives.

The acting was good, but the writing was often clichéd. A lot of it reminded me of things like "Back To Bataan" or the "Sands of Iwo Jima", only moving the scene from the beachheads of World War II to the vacuum of outer space. Watching the film, I got the feeling the actors looked a little too young for the parts they were playing, especially the guy who played Jack Swigert. Swigert was a tough, hard looking guy, while the actor portraying him looked almost adolescent.

The actor playing Lovell did a good job in playing "A" part, but he didn't come across to me as Jim Lovell, whose public persona I've been familiar with since I was in the first grade. Lovell always came across as one of the more glib and well spoken of the astronauts, with a strong sense of humor, and we don't sense this in the film. I think ii's more a product of the writing than the acting, but the Lovell character in the film seems more like a generic movie action hero than the real life Jim Lovell. This, I think, is the main shortcoming of the film, that the crew members, Lovell, Swigert, Haise & Mattingly, seem like 4 interchangeable guys, rather than distinct personalities. Again, I feel the fault is in the writing, not the acting.

A couple of the characters are never really named in the film (that I noticed) but it's obvious who they were supposed to be—mainly Sy Liebergot and John Aaron. I don't necessarily think an actor in a film needs to look exactly like the historical figure he's portraying, but the actor playing Liebergot looked nothing like the real Liebergot. I did find it interesting that the actor playing the unnamed CapCom through most of the film looked a whole lot like John Young. I wondered if this was done on purpose, because in the photos and films of the actual event, Young is often seen around the CapCom desk, though he never was CapCom on this flight. This didn't bug me, but it was interesting. (Also, the other CapCom in the film strongly resembled Stuart Roosa, Apollo 14 Command Module pilot, and I wondered if this, too, was intentional. Like Young, Roosa was never a CapCom on this flight.)

But for all the complaints, I did like the film. You have to expect a certain level of hokeyness when Hollywood tackles a serious subject. There's a happy ending when the astronauts return safely, and an even happier ending for Mattingly (in real life, not the film) when he was assigned to Apollo 16, a much longer, more interesting, mission, in which he got to do his own EVA, a deep flight space walk, which he would not have done had he not been booted from 13. Hopefully some of the folks seeing this film will be interested enough to read up on the subject, and then look at other missions of the Apollo (and Mercury and Gemini) programs, because it's all fascinating stuff. US space history doesn't begin with Apollo 11 and end with Apollo 13.