Everything you need to know about every American miniseries!

Here we have the bodice-ripper on view, a romance novel on TV.  Or at least that what the title and locale would lead one to expect.  Owing a lot to “The Sheik,” some 60+ years old by the time “Harem” was made, both long out of fashion and not a very good movie itself, there’s something exceedingly puerile in its zeal to make us wonder whether Western or Eastern culture has it better.  David Lean’s extraordinary “A Passage to India” had been filmed only a few years before, winning Oscars and applause, and set the standard for this sort of story for at least the rest of the decade.  If “Harem” weren’t so unintentionally stupid and easy to laugh at, it would be exceedingly boring. 

Before the movie starts, we’re treated to a two sentence history of the Ottoman Empire, now in its decline.  And then this: “It was also at this time that there were reports of foreign women being kidnapped and sold into the Sultan’s Harem.  Suddenly forced into a kind of life and culture they never knew existed, their safety always in question–these western women were force to live on eastern terms.” 

Forget being astoundingly politically incorrect even by 1986, forget this image of the lily white innocent virgin being conscripted into the sensual life of the Orient a cliche by 1886, so much so that even great authors were spoofing it (read a “Passage to India” if you don’t believe me), let alone 1986, forget the bad grammar, is this sentence meant to be frightening or funny?  Let’s let the movie tell us.

The leading lady is a problem right off the bat.  First, it’s Nancy Travis, a perpetual B-list actress without the sparkle to pull off this part.  Second, before she even speaks a word, this early 20th Century gal is riding a horse and shooting with the men, an anomaly to her class and stature, and obviously something of oddity even to her fiance, Julian Sands.  Nancy’s family are a prim British lot (though Nancy lacks the accent everyone else displays because, as we’re told in a line inserted into the script no doubt after a stab at the accent, her dead mother was American), with her aunt so worried about the number of settings and bridesmaids and propriety and her father eating hardboiled eggs with a fork and knife.  All of this makes her ideal as a 1980s heroine, but completely wrong for a period piece. 

Nancy harbors romantic notions of what marriage is like.  She asks Aunt Lily (Georgine Anderson) what marriage is like, and the veddy veddy terse response is, “you’ll get used to it.”  She then asks Julian to kiss her during a dance and their noses get in the way.  I would say she had been reading too many romance novels, but she doesn’t strike me as the reading type. 

Julian is called to Damascus on diplomatic business, which means having to postpone the wedding.  Nancy is disappointed (she drops her head, that’s how we know), but Julian proposes getting married at the embassy in Constantinople.  I hope someone wires the embassy! 

Cue the camels, we’ve hit the Orient (as they called it back then).  On the train, Julian introduces Nancy to Sarah Miles, as Lady Ashley, “the most famous Englishwoman in Damascus.”  Our gang hasn’t even gotten off the train when a gaggle of Bedouins go rushing by in burnooses, shooting from their horses, forcing the train to stop.  The board the train, one particularly excited by virginal Nancy Travis, though perhaps it’s Julian Sands they are after.  He’s far prettier.  There follows a political discourse between Sarah and Julian, offensive to just about every culture on earth at the time, but making a stab at sympathizing with the Turkish rebels who want to overthrow the Sultan. 

The Turkish soldiers are a pretty nasty lot, killing a woman from the rebel camp in order to push someone to answer for the raid on the train.  Their leader is Art Malik, as Tarik Pasha, a fairly handsome man who wants peace for his people.  His aide tells him what they need to do is bargain with the Sultan for their freedom, but Art has nothing.  So, they must get “what the Sultan wants most.”  If you’ve seen the cover of an East-meets-West romance novel,  you’ll know that is a blonde virgin.

Said virgin and her equally virginal husband show up at Sarah’s to find Bedouins at her home, relatives on her husband’s side.  She foreshadows the whole plot by telling them that there is “still a touch of chivalry” among these misunderstood people.  It seems Sarah’s only purpose is to give society lessons of this new culture.  Nancy is transfixed by the theory of “to be, to do, or have.”  She asks Sarah which she prefers.  “Only when  you have tasted the desert stillness can you know what it really is, just to be.”  Eh?  Run that by me again.  I guess it will make sense once Nancy is captured by the Sult…oops, getting ahead of myself.  She’s already beginning to change, questioning life, which upsets Julian. 

In an outfit missing everything but a Baedeker hanging from it, Nancy trundles off to see some ruins with an elderly woman “wearing very sensible shoes,” as Sarah puts it (in modern parlance, a lesbian).  The guide is Art’s henchman, so the plan is falling into place.  The rebels come riding into town and Nancy grabs a knife, which doesn’t help when she’s pulled up on a horse and carried away.  She lobs questions at Art, thankfully without Valentino’s snorting nasal passages, who speaks perfect English, having been educated in England (we learned that a few scenes ago).  Art is, naturally, immediately in love with Nancy, even giving her privacy when he insists she change into Bedouin dress.  Miss Ahead-of-her-time fancy pants tells Art she doesn’t know how to ride, to throw him off, and then mounts a horse perfectly and dashes off.  He’s better at the horse thing, so she doesn’t get far. 

The Great Sultan is played by Omar Sharif,  a rare Arab role for the Egyptian-born erstwhile star of “Lawrence of Arabia” where he did play an Arab (he played an awful lot of Russians, and of course Jewish Nicky Arnstein in “Funny Girl”).  A miniseries icon, Omar Sharif is here not just an Arab ruler, but a diplomat, wearing Western clothing and worrying about the rebels.  His aide Agha, played by Yaphet Kotto, phoning it in BIG TIME!  But, Yaphet knows the way to Omar’s mind and heart is through his harem. 

Nancy doesn’t know it, but her world gets a bit smaller when her father dies in his sleep before finding her.  Now it’s up to Julian, and that’s not a rosy prospect.

Art takes Nancy to Yaphet, who knows her worth, trading her for 20 prisoners.  Nancy still wants to know what the hell is going on (it’s a fair question for her character and anyone still watching), but Art doesn’t tell her.  Autocrat tells a captured British writer what he’s allowed to discuss in his books: the Sultan is great, the rebels are bad, the weather is terrific.  This is the message he wants sent to the rest of the world.  Nancy shows up right after this tirade, entering the harem of beautiful women who all seem completely happy.  Yaphet warns her that she can try to escape and face death, or learn to like the world and enjoy it.  She’s not convinced when another girl tells her how much of an honor it is to be in the Sultan’s harem, and that it has many pleasures.  The only bit of good news is that she doesn’t have to worry about rape, since Yaphet and all the other men are eunuchs. 

Nancy is brought to the head of the harem, played by (and I hope your chair has arms to grab onto) Ava Gardner.  Yup, Ava Gardner.  Not only is she the slumming vet, but this was her last movie.  As the Sultan’s wife, she looks far older than her years, but there’s still a flash of her legendary beauty there.  Ava pronounces naked Nancy “ordinary,” but Yaphet and harem plotter Cherie Lunghi have decided they can work the Sultan through her and Cherie begs Ava for Nancy.  Yeah, whatever, Ava says, no doubt killing time until the guy with the drink tray arrives.

A boat full of European finery arrives, much to the glee of the harem girls, and Cherie begins Nancy’s training.  Cherie sees Nancy as sexually frustrated.  “This is a matter of manners, not morals,” she says, spouting a Western ism with an unnatural flair.  Meanwhile, Ava goes to Omar, begging him not to take the girls that night.  He brushes her off with, “you gave me a son, that’s enough.”  How long ago was that?  Certainly not the recent past!  The kid has to be collecting Turkish social security.  Geez, she’s been pining a super long time.

Then comes the most ridiculous scene yet, because right as we’re starting to think perhaps the values of the East aren’t so bad, the harem girls give Omar a fashion show in Western dress.  Yup, a fashion show, complete with posing and turning to show off their finery.  It’s made even more ridiculous by Art giving a stirring speech right after, talking about dying children and starving people and breaking the “chain of oppression,” time to fight.  He’s the greatest political speaker ever if you go by the number of extra hired to cheer him on, but he’s shot right after the climax or his oratory.  He’s not dead, don’t worry.

In fact, his arm is in a sling when he tries to convert David Gant, a high-level Turkish soldier with rebel leanings.  He wants David (who would have been a better choice for the romantic lead, if you ask me) to join his side with all the other soldiers, but an answer to that will have to wait.

More important, apparently, is a trip to the marketplace arranged for Nancy by Cherie and Yaphet.  Nancy knocks Cherie over and makes a dash through the bazaar.  Certainly no one will notice the blonde lady dressed in the burnoose.  Sadly for her, she gets her costume trapped on a basket (and is apparently not stronger than wicker), only to be caught by a man who promises to return her to Julian at the embassy.  Unfortunately for her (and the story), he turns her in to Yaphet instead. 

Ava, in a marabou muumuu, confronts one of the girls who is pregnant.  “Who is the father?” Ava nefariously asks.  The girl says of course the Sultan is the father.  She is protected from harm because her name was inscribed in the great book of Omar’s conquests  Ava, the muumuu unwrapped to reveal a costume that looks about 400 years out of fashion, has removed her name from the great book, which makes the woman’s baby a bastard, and Ava has her drowned in front of the harem.  It’s too much for Nancy to bear, but Cheri and Yaphet use it as a teaching moment: “this is what happens to unprotected girls,” they tell her.  Take a lesson, ladies: don’t follow the rules and you have to share a scene with an overacting gorgon, and not just that, only she gets shot in soft focus.  You get full lights!

Nancy gives in and Cherie starts the training again.  As we hear Cherie spouting Ottoman fortune cookie sentences about learning to accept one’s body, Nancy toys with nudity, different fabrics, baths with rose petals, and splish splashing with other girls.  She kind of digs it and Cherie pronounces her ready to be seen by Omar, though not bedded by him yet.  Cherie teaches more, as Nancy stands around gyrating her arms and learning about jewels. 

You may be wondering what happened to Julian.  Oh, he’s been looking for her and provided she’s being stashed in the embassy, he’ll find her, because he hasn’t ventured out any further than his bedroom, the yutz.  The ambassador refuses to help him until there is proof that the Sultan has him.  Omar gives a great party and his girls entertain the British.  Julian shows a flash of gumption and almost invades the harem where Omar has gone to watch all of his girls drop their veils.  He goes over to Nancy, who hasn’t dropped hers (though it’s sheer, so there’s nothing not shown) and when she goes, Omar all but pounces, much to Ava’s chagrin.  She’s now IN as far as harem girls go.  She is on call whenever he wants. 

With Cherie preaching yet again, this time about how aphrodisiacs are stupid and it’s all about a woman’s charms, Sarah pops by to visit her pal Ava, in the hopes of spotting Nancy and helping Julian.  Sarah speaks of “kidnappings” to bring new girls to the harem, but Ava ends that conversation quickly.  “When I was the Sultan’s favorite…” is the way Cherie begins EVERY sentence, and then follows it with an annoying bit of harem wisdom.  Nancy is on the verge of getting them sick of them, until Cherie mentions it might be the way to her freedom.  Sarah sees Nancy on the way out and Nancy is bereft, and Cherie tells her not think about her.  The Sultan is her “only hope.”  At the speed Omar moves, that’s a long shot. 

The ambassador does not want to move quickly, instead trying to please the Sultan with presents.  He has to be politic about things, on two accounts: first, the Sultan has no interest in the British, who are afraid of him and second, the ambassador is worried that Nancy is now deflowered and not fit for society.  Sarah suggests to Julian that Art can help, if Julian pays him.  There’s a fun little twist: the man who put her in the harem now has to get her out.  Art agrees.  After all, it’s a lot of money.  “It will end in either freedom or death,” Art boasts to Julian, who is a bit wishy-washy about the plan. 

Only eunuchs are allowed in the Sultan’s palace, and the local doctor says he can make Art one and have him in the palace in a month, but Art is the hero, he ain’t gettin’ anything chopped off!  He bribes the doctor to lie and say he’s a eunuch so he can get inside ASAP, which is a good thing because Nancy is summoned to Omar’s chamber that night.  With half of the movie still left to go, this is going to be one looooooong game to get her out.  But, remember, Nancy is kind of liking the massages and pretty clothes, so she seems less in a hurry than even two scenes ago. 

They doll Nancy up in ropes of pearls all over her body and a rather unflattering outfit, but a make-up job straight out of, well, 1986.  She’s missing only shoulder pads for her walk-on in party scene on “Dynasty.”  However, when she trots off to the Sultan, she’s removed all the jewels, the fabulous gown and most of her make-up, opting instead of what seems to be a maternity gown.  As she’s led to the Sultan, she spots Art among the eunuchs and the look on his face doesn’t say, “I’m here to free you,” but rather, “I’m here to do you.”

Nancy bows to Omar, happy with his hookah, and forget to unbow.  “Are you going to watch the floor for the rest of the evening?” he asks.  Nancy decides to be honest with Omar, who is disarmed by her.  He then shows her a picture of Teddy Roosevelt and they discuss him a bit.  He asks her about her small-town upbringing, not understanding what a “front porch” is.  “You’ve never been to America!  You should go,” she says.  Unfortunately, he’s never left the palace.  His spies tell him everything, what does he need to go out for?  And there we have it, the sympathy card.  He’s just as much a prisoner as she is.  Well, kind of.  He is the Sultan and she’s a harem girl.  He beckons her to bed, but she bravely suggests that if she shag then and now, it will only be on command, not because she wants him.  She wants to be wooed.  So, they spend the night laughing by the window.  In the morning, she’s still a virgin, and Cherie reminds her, “true power comes only after making love to a man.”  Wait, she never said that before!  Nancy figured that out all by herself, somehow. 

In the softest focus yet, Ava has a scene (shot through plants no less, because Art is lurking behind them) where she worries about Nancy taking the Sultan’s love from her.  This is a rather bizarre scene because we’ve seen how Ava dispenses with the other girls, why should Nancy be any different?  Yaphet catches Art spying and vows his loyalty to Yaphet, who gets him a job as Nancy’s personal bodyguard.  They quarrel like all movie characters who don’t yet know they are in love and the reveals to her that he was sent by her fiance, who by the way, is spending his time in the embassy being insulted by British ladies who think Nancy is with the Sultan because she wants to be. 

Omar turns to Nancy to help him make political decisions.  OH, COME ON!  Now we’ve moved beyond “The Sheik” and gone to “The King and I,” but Omar is too shady to be the King of Siam and Nancy too bland to be either Mrs. Anna or Tuptim.  Just Art and Nancy are about to escape, Yaphet, in his American accent, arrives with Omar, who doesn’t want an orgy, just some alone time with his new favorite.  “How am I to court you?” he petulantly asks Nancy, who admits to being uninterested in jewels or gowns.  He offers to make her a second wife, but she reminds him that in America, a man can have only one wife, but he doesn’t care about that, so she tries another stumbling block.  “If we were married, I would want to be a virgin on my wedding night” and Omar says he wants an experienced gal.  “This Western courtship is beginning to bore me,” Omar sighs, but before the conversation can go further, Omar is informed that the rebels are at the palace gates.  Indeed, not only the rebels, but the soldiers.  The Sultan’s men fire on the crowd, killing a giant number of unarmed men, much to the consternation of some of the palace guards.  Omar refuses to believe there is a problem, but Art tells Nancy his men are inside the palace and it is impossible for anyone to escape.  Oh, and he’ll sleep in her bedroom that night for protection.  That’s convenient (though nothing happens). 

The next morning, Ava looks like she’s nursing the empire’s biggest hangover as she plots to have Nancy killed.  Luckily, Art is there and can fight off the two assassins who have come in clown make-up and fezzes to murder her.  I can’t explain the make-up, but my guess is it’s unused budget.  Since this movie has only two sets and it seems the harem girls provided their own costumes, “Harem” cost only Ava’s martini budget and a few incidentals, so by the time this scene was filmed, there was cash at hand (this movie looks like it was filmed for about $437 at a time when every large miniseries was claiming to be the most expensive ever filmed).

At a council of ministers, Nancy offers up her opinion, in the form of questions, much to the horror of Yaphet and Ava and the rest (well, not horror, since none of them care to register that much emotion), and Omar actually asks for Nancy’s advice.  She even defends him to Art, who ask her to “join the revolutionaries.”  She refuses and now the would-be lovers have another argument.  Nancy thinks she can be more powerful on the inside as the Sultan’s “conscience,” a new idea she’s taught him, but Art wants her to be on the side of freedom.  She scoffs at him as the man who got her into this predicament, thus assuring the movie at least an extra hour when it could be wrapped up in ten minutes.

Omar takes Nancy out of the palace, his first time out, to visit his realm.  He and Nancy even dress up as plain old folks to visit the marketplace.  No one recognized him?  He is the Sultan and his image would be everywhere, to say nothing of rebels following his every move.  They visit some holy men (actual whirling dervishes, to be exact), and though Yaphet brings Nancy to watch, he tells her politics don’t involve her.  His character is maddeningly inconsistent.  What the hell side is he on? 

The Sultan decides to crush the rebellion and suddenly Nancy realizes the autocratic way is wrong, so she dashes back to Art to tell him the secret plans.  If that were followed by a climactic fight scene, it might be exciting, but instead we have a tender scene where Art explains how he became a rebel (dead mother took bullets for him, dignity in life, all that nonsense), and of course delivered at dusk to have the most beautiful lighting possible.  In the morning, one of Nancy’s ladies brings in breakfast to find Art and Nancy have slept way too close together in the room to be proper.  Even worse, Ava has summoned her.

What’s Ava been up to?  She’s cutting off her hair to mix it in potions.  On her way to Ava, Nancy takes secret plans to smuggle out of the palace on a riverboat excursion where Cherie tells Nancy she has to sleep with Omar or risk losing his interest.  Art is the boatman, so he’s not at all happy.  For Nancy’s meeting with Ava, Sarah is there as well.  They have to pretend they don’t know each other as Sarah peppers Nancy with leading questions, though she seems to realize Nancy has changed and may not be the same woman who was stolen from Julian.  She gives her a jewel and the secret plans to smuggle out.  The harem girls dance to ragtime (where did they ever get records and learn the dance) as Ava poisons Nancy’s coffee.  The plan backfires when Nancy refuses the coffee and Cherie ends up drinking it.

Dimwit Julian is confused by the note Sarah has brought to him from Nancy.  He can’t believe she wrote the note, but Sarah convinces him to trust her and then goes off to relay a response.  Julian is doubly horrified that she is involved in politics.  From the onset, she’s been involved in everything!

Dying is not quick for Cherie, who hacks up a lot and then tells Nancy that there is a poison untraceable in cold coffee (not just any coffee, cold coffee), and she got it by the river.  “It was meant for me,” Nancy says.  It took that long to figure it out, huh?  “It was meant for all of us,” Cherie says and dies.  Feeling guilty and touched by all the people she has met at the harem (which would include only Cherie and Art who have been nice to her), she needs to stay put and send Art off to his men.  “Come back for me,” she says and then they gaze longingly at each other.  I guess the kiss will have to wait. 

Art rushes to David, who still may or may not be loyal to the cause, but there is no way into his palace.  But, if they can draw the Sultan out…yeah, you get it!  There is some tripe about rebellious Armenians and they can use them to get the Sultan’s forces from the palace.  But what of the women and children (we have yet to see a child in this whole movie) who might be killed?  Well, “people die in revolutions” is the rationale David gives.  Everyone buys it without thinking, but they still don’t know if David will join the cause.  Art has to make a side trip back to the palace to save Nancy, because he doesn’t want her dying in the siege.  This annoys his companions, who haven’t had to think about Art in love before. 

When he does return, he gets the royal treatment.  She bathes his feet, lights candles, the whole shebang.  Ava even lets them borrow the soft focus lenses for their big kiss so it looks extra romantic.  With cascading violins, Art helps Nancy lose that pesky virginity.

But there is a problem.  Ava has apparently noticed her special cameras have been taken and she’s standing in the doorway when Nancy and Art awake.  “Stupid…stupid girl!” Ava oozes.  She’s taken to Omar and Ava insists that she be drowned.  Yaphet says that hasn’t been done for years, but Ava says the Sultan hasn’t been betrayed for years.  In front of everyone (and notice that Omar is wearing a Western suit, because his Sultan gowns would make Eastern ways too evil), the Sultan has Art whipped.  Art lies, saying he’s a spy and he raped Nancy, but Ava says, “he’s lying.  She was clinging to him like a LOVER!”  There’s a problem with that lie and Omar, for the first time in the movie, is smart enough to figure something out.  “If this man is telling the truth, you should want him dead,” he tells Nancy, saying that she holds his life in her hands.  As he’s being strangled, she finally stops it all with a big howl and that crying without tears that only actresses and cloying babies can manage. 

Though Yaphet sympathizes with her, he has to oversee Nancy’s death.  She is placed in a burlap sack filled with rocks to be tossed into the sea.  He’s careful to not actually tie the top of the sack in the hopes that she can wriggle out of it somehow.  Her trip to the bottom of the Bosporus is charming.  There are dozens of sacks with bones.  But, Nancy gets out of her sack and kicks her way up where she’s picked up by a ship of men, one of whom pipes in, “I was sure she was a Mermaid for sure.”  In a naval pinafore, she’s reunited with Julian, though with a hug, not a kiss.  She asks to see her father.  Ooooh, riiiiiiight, um, yeah, someone has to tell her he’s dead.  Before that happens, she and Julian have to have the discussion of whether or not they still love each other.  She tries her best to worm out of it, but Julian swears he can forgive her anything she’s done.  Only then does he tell her papa ain’t no more. 

Sarah chides Nancy for walking around the embassy in a nightgown.  “It’s not very British, you know.”  Nancy has gotten used to the loose clothing.  She then decides she has to go to rescue Art, owing him a debt, promising that she’ll be back to spend the rest of her lifetime with Julian (yikes, she would be better off dying with Art in the attack on the palace).  She dashes off to the camp of his friends, but they can’t risk sending anyone to the palace, so Nancy begs to go herself, because who knows the palace better than she does?  One of the men suggests she knows only the harem, and he’s not wrong, because remember, we’ve only ever seen the harem.  The set budget didn’t include the rest of the palace.  Nancy is given a soldier’s uniform, but warned to forget Art, because his only loyalty is to his country and cause.  Apparently no one but Nancy and Art ever read a romance novel.  As she’s about to leave, the camp is surrounded…by David’s men.  Yes, he’s joined the rebels!  You doubters who didn’t think he would, shame on you!  Everyone always goes to the side of good before it’s too late when up against an autocracy.  DUH!

Nancy sneaks into the palace dressed as a soldier, a mute soldier, the clever little thing!  She finds her way to Art’s cell, revealing herself to him “as a dream.”  Only a man stuck in a cell ready to die would have that dream, but these two are goofy in love for each other.  Art is chained in a box and paraded through the city as a warning to anyone hiding rebels.  No one in the city helps.  That’s going to be a problem for the Sultan, in the long run.  The executioner goes to cut off Art’s head, but instead cuts off his shackles.  It’s Nancy! We should have guessed something like this would happen because every time the executioner has been shown, it’s been with a black mask.  Now the rebels come out from everywhere, surround the Sultan’s loyal men and there is a ton of happiness.  “You lead us to the palace, you have earned the right,” they tell Nancy, now apparently Joan of Arc.

Omar and Ava are caught seemingly unaware (well, Ava wasn’t aware of much by 1986) and the rebels storm the palace.  Ava is led away by the guards, looking at Nancy with a look that says, “I’ll get you, my pretty one!”  Yaphet asks Omar what his plans are…only to find out he actually has plans because he’s always waiting for revolution.  Art and Nancy find him in his throne room waiting peacefully, except for the machine guns he had installed behind him, operated by a control from his throne.  Nancy has forgotten about that until he fires them, but Art saves her life.  Omar decides right then and there to become a constitutional monarch, “with no real power” and issues a declaration to have a parliament elected.  That’s convenient!  Now everyone is a hero.  How come this never occurred to Charles I of England or Louis XVI of France, yet Omar Sharif figures it out in 15 seconds. 

Art takes Nancy back to Julian, who snaps at her, rather unfairly, that he thought anything requiring forgiveness was for whatever happened in the harem, not falling in love with Art, which he can see very clearly.  Nancy has to catch the train to England, getting a few more pearls of hokey wisdom from Sarah.    And then, shots ring out from across the sand dunes.  Art has come to claim his woman, though Julian thinks her foolish.  “I won’t wait for you again,” he sneers.  Oh, like she cares?  Not when dashing Art comes galloping over to claim her, disproving the theory that everyone has had, that he can’t run a rebellion and be in love at the same time. 

In the sub-genre of romance miniseries, there are some very passionate and real entries.  There is also a whole bunch of trash, and even the trash is varied.  There is delicious trash like “Lace” or “Evergreen” and there is out-and-out trash like “Harem.”  Lacking any sense of sensuality, completely miscast and so predictable a child could figure out every ensuing scene, “Harem” is a piece that simply took advantage of the genre, assuming that something big and foreign would triumph over its tedious unwrapping. 

We should feel most sorry for poor Ava Gardner, capping off her career here.  Yes, she had an erratic career, mostly because of her own misbehavior, but she certainly didn’t do anything bad enough to earn her role here! 

I cannot imagine having “The First Olympics Athens 1896” air in May of 1984 was an accident, considering the United States was about to handle the Summer Olympics, free of the Communist bloc, no less.  However, this rah-rah sports epic is actually more than just a “go team” effort.  Cast beautifully and expertly delivered, it’s a hell of a lot less goofy than the the production that was Los Angeles in 1984 (American culture exposed to the world at its worst, and that was just the opening ceremony).

An act of selfless heroism starts the movie when a carriage breaks on an old man and Robert Garrett (Hunt Block) lifts the carriage, showing extreme strength, and saving the man.  He then dashes off to lunch with his mother Alice (Angela Lansbury).  He’s on his way to college in Princeton, with the support of his widowed mother.  “You’re a dreamer, you always have been, my darling, but don’t let that worry you.  After all, the world was fashioned by dreamers,” she tells her nervous son. 

At the same time in Greece, Spiro Louis (Nicos Ziagos) gets a letter ordering him into the army for two years.  His mother is not at all supportive because he’s the breadwinner for the family, but when he promises to buy her a new dress with the money the government will give him, she softens up.

Also at the time in Australia, a race is run, but lost by Edwin Flack (Benedict Taylor), who impresses a visiting English track coach, who sees in this boy a long-distance runner.  His wealthy parents disagree about whether or not he needs to go to England for schooling, but he can go, against his father’s wishes. 

In Paris, Dr. Pierre de Coubertin (Louis Jordan) announces to a rather small crowd that the Olympics will be held in two years in Athens.  Unfortunately, Olympic Committee can only provide a locale, so he urges everyone assembled to return to their countries and send the best male athletes they can find (females wouldn’t be part of the Olympics just yet). 

James Connolly (David Caruso) is an Irish laborer in Boston who starts by falling off a ladder to get out of work in order to try for a scholarship at Harvard.  The Brahmans are not exactly fans, though he’s obviously very intelligent. 

Now that we have met most of the principles, we can move into the story.  de Coubertin goes to America to meet with William Sloane (David Ogden Stiers), an ancient scholar who inspired de Coubertin to put together the modern Olympics.  He wants Sloane to head the Olympic movement in America.  America is wealthy and not currently arguing with anyone, so its presence is vital.  It’s not going to be an easy task because the top colleges don’t believe athletics are equal to education, or even belong on the hallowed ground of places like Harvard and Princeton.

With Spiro on leave from his army duties, there is talk of him throwing discus at these newfangled Olympics.  Edwin Flack is doing well at Oxford, despite jokes about Australians from supercilious English lads.  At the meeting Sloane and de Coubertin set for athletes, only Robert Garrett shows up, but he doesn’t know any sports.  James Connolly reveals himself to be quite a wrestler when he gets in a scrape and instead of punishment, he’s put on the team.  This is a warts-and-all story.  Olympians came not from years of practice, but luck, blackmail, hearsay and any other method.  Hell, they don’t even know the rules to the games and the marathon wasn’t part of a games, merely the distance Marathon had run to Athens to proclaim a victory and drop dead. 

When Spiro fails to make it back to barracks one night, instead of being punished, he is sent to the Olympic games, where he can win 100,000 drachmas.  “I would be honored even without the money,” he says, already realizing the Olympic spirit without knowing it.  Garrett has to convince a local blacksmith to make a discus.  They have to make high jump poles from nothing, literally everything from scratch, based on designs and pictures thousands of years old.  It’s downright comical how the sports take form because Greek pictures do not fit into the world of 1894.  The universities clamp down on letting the guys practice, so Sloane’s wife comes up with an idea: the fields of a girl’s school run by Madame Ursula (Honor Blackman). 

Sloane’s boys will be making their first public appearance as athletes.  They come out for their races wearing nothing, just like the statues and Greek lore they read have described.   James Connolly does a great job of the long jump at an Irish track meet.  He and a few others are invited to train at Princeton.  James initially turns them down because he’s afraid of water and there is no other way to get to Athens.  Edwin Flack wants to go, but he finds out the Oxford and Cambridge boys will not be going because the invitation for the Olympics came in French, which they found offensive.

By the summer of 1895, there is a core of an American team and Sloane brings them together for the first time.  Before training starts, he tells them there is no expectation of winning against the more organized European teams, but they should give their best and that’s what matters (the Olympic spirit).  However, the actual coach doesn’t agree.  He wants them to win!  Their initial attempts look mighty impressive and Madame Ursula has her girls serve them food and such to keep morale high.  James shows up unexpectedly when his mother dies and is welcomed by the coach.  It takes a black female servant at the school to show them how to properly jump hurdles.  The long stretch of training footage is very typical of American sports movies, watching the untrained become strong, focused and talented.  With the training, they actually start to surpass European records.

What is still lacking is the money to get the lads to Greece.  A meeting is held among Boston’s Irish community to support James, who gives a rousing speech about “the flag we wear on our uniform.”  He promises them that if they give the money, he’ll win!  Money is also raised by locking in boys from other sports like swimming and shooting.  Robert, a socially frightened boy, has broken through his shell and made friends, and explains to his mother how important it is to him, begging for money.

Bad news comes when Harvard denies James the chance to go because he can’t leave for that long, a serious problem, and then Princeton gives only $100 for the effort.  The boat sails in two days and they are short two tickets.  The only way Sloane can figure out how to get those two is to give up his own tickets. 

In Greece, Spiro takes up a collection from his fellow soldiers, but Edwin certainly has the money, though the only other teammates he’ll find there are guys recruited from the British Embassy in Greece. 

When it’s time to leave the US, Robert introduces his mother to his girl and then promises to win for her.  A Greek American patriot shows up to give out little American flags to the boys, who are getting quite a gigantic send-off.  But, there’s a giant problem: the difference in the Greek and American calendars, which means the guys will arrive only one day before the end of the games.  Sloane promises to “move heaven and earth” to make sure they get there at the right time. 

de Coubertin is livid because he doesn’t want the first games to be a disaster and Sloane is trying everything he can think of.  A travel agent tells him the only way to get them there faster is over land, giving them a few hours before the games begin.  Of course, it means relying on the inaccurate Italian train system and a steamer that crosses to Greece only once a week. 

The athletes are unaware of the problems, which Mrs. Sloane hopes will mean they are relaxing, but it’s not that easy.  James, as he said earlier, is deathly afraid of the ocean and is sick immediately.  Most of the rest have mal de mer as well.  Only swimmer David Gilliam is completely unaffected, able to pack down the sweets to the digestive horror of his teammates. 

At a stopover in Gibraltar, the British Consulate gives the boys the bad news about the travel, but Robert pushes through their doubts and insists on trying to make it.  Then they have a while to practice before their overland trek.

On April 1 in Athens, the flags of participating nations are up and Edwin arrives alone.  He is awestruck by the coliseum, but not as impressed with the rest of the British team, a bunch of preening peacocks.  The team also assumes the Americans won’t make it, though Edwin hopes they will.

April 2 brings no better news for the for Yanks.  The train wheel breaks and takes hours to repair.  Leaving the train to get a drink, James is bewitches by a local gorgeous Italian woman and Robert tries to buy a hat, which isn’t expensive, but he feels he has to bargain.  That works, but unfortunately, he makes some word mistakes and angers the vendor.  The train is ready before the boys are back, but they aren’t runners for nothing and make it, all except for James, who has accidentally left his wallet.  He hurdles the fence and makes it to the train, injuring one of his teammates in the process. 

Dress rehearsals are held on April 3, though the British are still sneering at the Games, with the British holding their own version in England at the same time.  The Greeks practice the national anthems, but use “Yankee Doodle Dandy” for the US because it’s the only sheet music they could find.  The musical director goes to a visiting American ship and finds out there is no national anthem, and no words to the song that would eventually become the national anthem.  The Americans have made it to Brindisi to catch the ferry to Greece, which thankfully hasn’t left yet.  Edwin gets a wonderful surprise when his parents show up for support. 

On the opening day of the games, the King and Queen of Greece are there and the parade of nations begins, with Edwin the only Australian.  Spiro has to march as a soldier until his day of competition.  As for the Americans, they are just finally landing as the ceremony is beginning, but bureaucracy tangles them up until the American Consul shows up to help.  The Greeks are the last to march (unlike in future Olympics when they would start the procession), but just as they finish, the Americans, suitcases in hand, arrive, to a gigantic cheer by naval men stationed in Greece.  It’s the King of Greece who opens the game, rather than de Coubertin, as the head of the IOC would inherit that job in the future. 

David is very guilty over the injury caused to his teammate, who refuses to let it go.  The qualifying race heats come first.  The Americans coast to astonishingly easy victories in all three heats.  The triple long jump has no qualifying rounds, just one chance for David to win.  Dramatic tension builds as David is the last to go, showboating all the way and taking his time…before winning!  The fully orchestrated national anthem is held for the first time, baffling to everyone.  “It sounds Greek to me,” one of the Americans quips.  Robert more seriously notes that David is the first Olympic champion in over 1500 years and David dedicates the honor to his mother. 

Edwin wins his first heat, though under the Australian flag.  The second heat has the injured American and a Frenchman who wears gloves because it’s polite to do with the King of Greece in attendance.  Blake (Alex Hyde-White), injury be damned, wins his qualifying heat, meaning he will battle Edwin in the finals.  Robert and his discus are up next.  The Greeks want to win this event “as a matter of national pride.”  Robert tries to use his own discus, but the official will not allow it and give him the official one, which is lighter, making it far easier to throw.  This, of course, we get in slow motion and he wins handily, another gold for the US.  Standing on the podium, he hears his mother’s words again about pride in one’s achievements.

Back in the US, Sloane gets a telegram with all of the fantastic news. 

The second day brings the hurdles.  The US guys tie and win in the first heat.  The obnoxious Brit is in the second heat, angering even the British observers.  But, he wins, so all is forgiven.  The Greeks are counting on Spiro to win the marathon, but he’s not so sanguine about his chances.  The long jump finale pits David against Robert, but it’s a third American who wins, giving them the gold, silver and bronze.  Another victory for the Americans in the 400 meters, gold, silver and bronze.  When the 1500 meter race is run, Alex is in the mix, but so is Australian’s hunky Edwin, for whom the stuffy British are forced to root because so far they have won medals only in lawn tennis.  Injured Alex loses to Edwin, forced to to hear the British national anthem.  More upset than Alex is David, who was the cause of his injury.  With the Crown Prince of Greece officiating, Robert is ready for the shot put finals.  He wins and sets a record doing it.  Another American national anthem for the beleaguered musical director. 

Edwin and his parents go off to see the ruins, but Edwin is unsure about his future, unsure about all of the plans his parents have made for him.  The constant carping of his parents finally cause him to snap at him, but he works it out with his parents.

A Greek newspaper writes a terrible quote and attributes it to Robert, but the coach thinks he can fix it.  The coach also tries to heal the bad feelings between Alex and David, who has broken his hand smashing it against a brick wall out of guilt when Alex lost his race.  Alex shows up in David’s room with a bottle of ouzo as an apology. 

The British Ambassador tries to make good with Edwin, totally embarrassed that the games in England have been canceled, begging him to run under the British flag.  He is resolute that he will run only as an Australian. 

The 800 meter race Alex and Edwin vying for supremacy, along with that Frenchman with the gloves.  It’s a photo finish and no one is immediately sure who won.  The officials decide in favor of Edwin.  On the medal podium, Edwin pulls second-place Alex up onto his block, showing the ultimate in Olympic spirit and dazzling the crowd. 

Let’s not forget we have swimmers and shooters too.  The American swimmer is worthless, finding the water too cold, so it’s back to the track for the high jump.   Unfortunately, he crashes into the bar.  David does the same.  Only the third American makes it.  There’s a cute moment on the podium stand when David forgets he didn’t win and tries to mount the gold position. 

By now everyone in the US is passionately interested in the results, swamping the telegraphy office.  Sloane reads the news proudly, even the joke about their sinking swimmer.

The last day brings the marathon and the competitors are sent off the night before to the starting point, with the Greeks turning out in force for Spiro.  Robert, Alex and Edwin are also in the wagon.  The Greek translator tells Robert that Spiro is “not just running for himself, but for all Greeks,” all the peasants and all their hopes.  Robert feels almost as if he wants him to win. 

As the marathon is underway, the pole vaulting is also happening, but the Americans are laughing because the rules state the bar has to start insanely low and it’s no problem for anyone to soar above it.  “Wake me when they get to six feet,” one of the guys quips. 

The marathon runners drink at every rest stop, but it looks like booze, so these guys might be bobbing and weaving by the time they hit the stadium.

The Americans take all three medals in the 100 meter. 

Edwin passes out running the marathon, the alcohol getting the best of him.  A French runner goes down, but injured Alex manages well. 

Since the Americans are so versatile, one of the pole vaulters has to run in the 110 meter hurdles, but the officials won’t let him leave the event because it would mean forfeiting the pole vault.  However, the American coach comes up with a way around that.  The obnoxious show off Brit angers everyone, including his own Ambassador.  de Coubertin is insistent that the game should be about amateurs and good sportsmanship.  The Brit loses the race and is pelted by fruit from the crowd.  The Americans win and the poor musical director suffers through the anthem yet again.  Back to the pole vault they go to polish that one off too.  After a second place finish in the hurdle, Hoyt wins the pole vault and another hearing of his anthem.

Injured Alex stumbles, but David is with him on a bicycle to make him run to metered poetry, just like they practiced.  Spiro and Robert are also still in the race.  Get ready for the waterworks when Alex falls, cradled in David’s arms as he crying recites more poetry.  When Robert passes, David yells, “keep going..and win!” 

The crowd goes wild when the marathoners are about to enter the stadium with Spiro in the lead, Robert close on his heels.  Robert trips and falls, leaving it to Spiro to enter the stadium in a supreme hail of glory.  No one there denies him his bravery and it’s of course the type of climax only the movies can provide, complete with stirring music.  The band leader takes pride in playing his country’s national anthem…finally! 

The American boys are welcomed back with bands and streamers.  Mrs. Garrett is unsettled that Robert dashes to his girlfriend instead of her first, but when Robert asks for her blessing to marry his sweetheart, she can’t refuse.  The team carries Sloane in the air and even reward the servant who showed them how to do the hurdles.  de Coubertin sends Sloane a telegram asking him to be a permanent member of the Olympic committee and to put together an American team for Paris in 1900.  “Will women be a part of the games?” he is asked.  He sure hopes so (thought that would not happen until 1928).

Given the terrible title, this miniseries could really have been a giant snooze.  If it had focused on de Coubertin’s problems putting together the Olympics or the politics involved, it may have been truer, but this exists to excite people for the Olympics, to get them interested in the athletes and their efforts.  The creators could have chosen any one of the Olympic games as a vehicle, but of course they chose one where the Americans were supremely victorious, with the only serious gigantic win going to a Greek, which is just as thrilling in context.  I watched this with the same choked-back tears I have when I watch the real Olympics.

Because the miniseries movement made a virtual sub-genre about anything having to do with the Kennedys, naturally it got around to Ari Onassis, though he was certain a dramatic larger-than-life figure of his own, perfect dramatic fodder for the personalities the miniseries celebrated.  He appears in nearly all of the Kennedy miniseries and had at least one theatrical movie made about him (“The Greek Tycoon,” though it’s “fiction,” it’s clearly about Onassis), usually played by an elderly vet who looks like a gross old man next to ethereal Jackie, so it’s nice to have a story where he’s allowed to be a gross young man next to everyone, Jackie included (this movie is awfully kind to his aging process, not to mention his looks).  In life, Ari Onassis was the very personification of 20th Century Eurotrash, parvenu nouveu riche, a man coarse and vulgar, but with so much money that everyone paid homage.  If he hadn’t been for real, the miniseries would have certainly invented him.  So, it stands to reason that it instead gets to re-invent him as some sort of charming Lothario who went from woman to woman as he happened to be gathering the world’s greatest fortune.

“Onassis: The Richest Man in the World” also features our muse of the miniseries, Jane Seymour, in her only Emmy-winning role.  Can you believe it?  Just one Emmy.  I thought she won at least a few for “Dr. Quinn,” but nope.  Not “East of Eden” and not even “War and Remembrance.”  She sure as hell deserved a wall full of Emmys, but for now, this one will have to do (and it does, because she’s magnificent).

This movie is a Grade-A cheese-fest, the kind that made American television so delicious in the 1980s.  Ridiculously cast and no deeper than page two of a tabloid, “Onassis: The Richest Man in the World” is presented as a Greek-infused “Dallas,” with Onassis basically J.R. Ewing on a boat.

The movie begs us to laugh from the onset where Raul Julia does does his version of a dramatic Greek dance amidst ruins on a Greek cliff while the major players on his life give one-line obituaries about him.  It’s okay, you can hit pause while you stop laughing.  Raul Julia as Ari Onassis?  The most Hispanic of actors playing the most Greek of men?  Fine if the movie wants a star, but Raul Julia?  Not once in his career (not even here) did he try to hide his natural accent for a film role.  But, on top of that, wow, they certainly upped Ari, who was an ugly little gnome of a man, on the handsome scale! 

The movie starts with Young Ari (Elias Koteas) running a race on the beach while his disapproving father watches.  Socrates Onassis (Anthony Quinn, who played the Ari character in “The Greek Tycoon”), clucks to his family, “I have to teach him something…before life does,” when he’s told he’s too hard on his son.  That’s interesting parenting.  Because Socrates is so nasty, Young Ari loses the second race.  But, his uncle sweeps him off to a local whorehouse where Young Ari is baffled to find out that someone may like him only for his money.  He better get used to it, because everyone in the man’s life would do the same. 

Socrates Onassis is a Smyrna merchant who dispenses advice to his son that sounds like the Greek version of fortune cookies, but with a sincerity that borders on the fanatical (Tony Quinn had long given up trying to actually act by this point in his career).  War between the Greeks and Turks splits Socrates from his brother, Ari’s favorite relative, and the Turks confiscate Socrates’ property and money.  Ari volunteers to stay on in the house to avoid being sent to a labor camp. 

Anthony Quinn goes into melodrama hysterics living in a prison camp, begging his son through the fence to get him some new pants as he has soiled himself.  Young Ari can help by sharing a bed with the Turkish general who has taken his family’s home, but it takes his papa’s money, hidden under the floorboards, to bribe officials and reunite the family.  Is Socrates grateful?  Of course not!  He castigates his son for leaving him nothing to restart his business.  Of course the argument is REALLY about Ari’s relationship with the Turk.  Papa tosses Ari out of the house, but he’s more than willing to go, boarding a ship to Buenos Aires and vowing to return, wearing a suit but playing good old-fashioned Greek tragedy.

He sends his family letters about how he lives among “high society” in Buenos Aires (he works in a restaurant where they eat) and he has the finest instruction in the tango (he reads it out of a book and draws chalk outlines on the floor) and has a job in communications (he’s a switchboard operator who listens in on conversations).  It’s the importation of Turkish tobacco that starts Ari’s fortune, swindling a bank into giving him a loan for the materials because he listens in on a call that says Turkish cigarettes are all the rage. 

Only when Ari returns to Greece does Raul Julia take over playing him.  I suppose that makes sense.  One leaves Greece Greek and returns to from Argentina Latin.  That’s the only explanation I can think of for how the hell anyone cast Raul Julia as Ari Onassis.  Because Ari returns to Greece wealthy, Papa Socrates is thrilled to see him.  A welcome home dinner gives Quinn a chance to revisit his Zorba dance moves, and when he invites his son to dance with him, one expects a tango from the son and a heart attack from the father.  Only the latter happens, of course, because old people who dance in miniseries are not long for the world, and the next scene shows everyone on the way to his funeral.

Onassis is interesting in shipping, helped by his loyal friend Costa Gratsos (John Kapelos), and a montage shows us how quickly he became a gazillionaire, inventing the supertanker, exploiting wars and finally making it to America, where he works his smooth Latin charm (sorry, Greek charm…no, Latin charm, because Raul Julia isn’t even attempting to play Greek here) on the Tina Livanos, a Greek girl whose father is a shipping magnate.  Onassis suggests “a merger…a personal merger” to her father, telling him he might as well take him into the family and avoid being competition.  His “killer instinct,” as Costa calls it, is fully in bloom.  Tina (Beatie Edney) is certainly no prize, but Onassis is too focused on monopolizing the oil shipping industry.  Even at his wedding he’s all business. 

The wedding night is not exactly as upper-crust Tina expected.  No silk pajamas, just Ari in a towel, delighting in his physical prowess.  Time passes, two children are born, Onassis fills his home with golden everything and he goes after an airline company.  The marriage doesn’t work.  Ari sleeps around and Tina resents being “a possession.”  “You’re nothing but a Turkish peasant,” she snaps in a dialogue exchange that occurs in every miniseries about a rich person with an unhappy spouse (we saw it a few times with Barbara Hutton already), but this miniseries gives us a twist here.  Ari slaps her and then kisses her for it.  The man is a sexual fiend.

It’s Jane Seymour time!  We have our first glimpse of her Maria Callas mid-opera, with Onassis bewitched in the audience.  Okay, is Jane any better cast as Maria than Raul as Ari?  Probably not, but here’s the difference: Jane Seymour can act and therefore makes us believe, whereas Raul plays himself and remembers only periodically he’s being filmed. 

Callas is invited aboard the Christina, Onassis’ island-sized yacht, and the two oversized personalities meld beautifully.  Callas is nagged by her manager-husband about an upcoming concert and Jane runs around the boat yelling, “I will always have another concert.  I may never have another yacht,” before tossing a newspaper into the sea, getting a standing ovation from Ari for that bit of histrionics.  Ari counters with some cheese of his own, plucking flowers and talking about how they remind him of the past and then seducing her in a tiny watering hole with more of that Greek dancing he doesn’t do so well.  Watch this scene for the contrast in styles: Julia smolders like Valentino because every actor dancing sensually since the 1920s is supposed to do that; Seymour works from the eyes, never forgetting she’s in character.  Mr. Callas (Geoffrey Hutchings) doesn’t stand a chance, even though he rails at his wife that he turned her from a “fat kid from Brooklyn” into the world’s reigning opera diva.

The pull from Ari is just too strong and she leaves the argument with her husband to go to Ari’s room, where she gives in, but not without expected dramatics.  “My heart is beating so fast,” she whispers, contorting her body like she’s on stage as Ari just wants to get it on.  Oh, and did I mention they left the door open, too hot to bother with details?  Cue Tina, who finally leaves Ari, because she won’t “stand around while you and your canary cavort in public.”  Their goodbye argument returns us to the world of cliche (she can’t handle his whoring and he’s bought her everything but never given her himself, blah, blah, blah).

Having learned the fine art of over-the-top fighting from Maria Callas, Onassis threatens Tina’s father not to mess with him in a scene that is gut-bustingly amusing.  He won’t give Tina what she wants in the divorce, but he also won’t give up Maria, he tells Costa in an equally goofy scene following.  When the press asks him about his Callas, Ari’s response is “I’m a sailor, these things happen.”  Yes, and in only 10 minutes of screen time. 

Although Raul Julia has finally decided to open up his performance a little, he picked the wrong time.  He’s no match for Jane Seymour’s Callas, who gets all pissy when he refers to her as a “friend” in the paper, throwing a tantrum that she wants to be known as the mistress of Onassis.  She’s not at all thrilled that Ari’s kids make fun of her, but this is a woman who packs her luggage in a full face of make-up, not exactly the maternal type.  Every discussion turns into a fiery argument where Callas explodes again and again.  It’s great fun to watch, because Jane wipes the deck with Raul each time.

But Maria Callas doesn’t have Ari to herself for long.  Ari entertains the Churchills (yes, those Churchills) on his yacht along with Lee Radziwill (yes, that Lee Radziwill).  Talk turns to her sister Jackie (yes, that Jackie) immediately, though there’s a gigantic historical error here.  When Lee tells all that Jackie is pregnant, Churchill says, “why not?  A Camelot on the other side of the Atlantic.”  The whole Camelot-Kennedy connection wouldn’t actually start until the tail end of JFK’s life, but it wouldn’t turn myth until after his death, because Jackie carefully created it.  I know, I know, I’m the only person who would even hear that sentence, let alone note it.

So here come the Kennedys.  Jackie (Francesca Annis) loses her baby and accepts an invitation to recuperate on Ari’s yacht.  Annis doesn’t do a lot but whisper, not one of the better Jackie O impersonations in miniseries history.  Ari lays it on thick when he squires Jackie, talking nonsense about legacies and history.  “You, you could become a legend,” he tells her, which of course she wants to hear.  He’s learned to manipulate women.  The Kennedy brothers, basically a bunch of guys with Boston accents, are not happy with Jackie’s choice in yacht mates.  They order her home and Bobby tells Jack the next time she needs to rest, “send her to Hyannisport.”  Oh, yeah, kick back during tackle football, that’s exactly what Jackie wanted. 

This Jackie is frankly annoying.  “I just realized, I haven’t seen your eyes this entire trip,” she whispers to Ari, the sunglasses-wearing Jack Nicholson of the high seas “and eyes are the windows of the soul,” sounding like one of the highfalutin’ books she read at Miss Porter’s.  “I like to keep the curtains drawn,” he replies, sounding like a hokum-laden miniseries character.  “I think I’ll start wearing glasses all the time.  It does add a certain mystique,” Jackie replies.  Ah, mystery solved!  Now we know where Jackie got her obsession for sunglasses: a chance quip on the Onassis yacht. 

Just because Jackie has entered the picture doesn’t mean Maria Callas has left it.  Maria isn’t initially that jealous.  “I heard her speak once.  She sounded like Marilyn Monroe playing Ophelia,” she jokes in the movie’s best line.  They start mauling each other with kisses and then JFK is killed.  Onassis is invited to the funeral by Lee.  “A Greek in the White House?” Bobby rages.  Onassis, in hushed tones, offers Jackie any solace she may require, but he’s still with Maria, at least physically for his attentions have of course been turned to the world’s highest prize, the widow Kennedy.  He visits her at a rehearsal (which she conducts in a fur coat), and she tells him she needs him at an upcoming concert because she knows the audiences are turning on her.  He says he’ll be back in time for the concert and invents an excuse about having to visit one of his tankers. 

Maria is fit to be tied when Ari isn’t at the concert.  “Roses, roses, but where is Aristo?” she howls when she gets baskets of flowers and downs pills to calm her down before the performance.  Aristo is in a tuxedo serving a fine meal to Jackie, long having abandoned her widow’s weeds for sparkling diamonds.  The scene where Onassis talks to himself in the mirror about how virile he still is, rehearsing a speech for Jackie is terrific camp, especially because Raul looks 40 and Onassis was over 60 by this point.  But, his goony speech works on Jackie, much to Bobby’s ire.  He complains to her on a walk through the woods, but I could only understand his dialogue because hers is so whispered it’s not picked up by the microphones.  He needs her support for his campaign and I think she goes into her “I’m frightened for the kids” speech (a bit prematurely, historically), but again, it’s hard to hear, even at full volume.  Practical Bobby insists that she at least wait until he wins the election before she goes public with her affair.  “Sooner or later it is going to come down to a test of wills,” Ari roars when he gets the news, setting up his well-documented hatred for Bobby (this movie is based on Peter Evans book, his first about Onassis, and his second would be about their actual dispute, making an interesting argument for Onassis’ part in Bobby’s assassination).

Costa reminds Ari that while Jackie is unavailable, he still has Maria, so he shows up with flowers and more of that silky Latin…Greek…Laek…Gratin…whatever, charm.  They end up in bed together, where they work best, Maria happy with “your beautiful lies.” 

We return to the land of the miniseries cliche where Ari’s grown-up son is nervously flying a plane with Dad.  Onassis only wants to hear about boats, while Alexander wants to run the airline.  You don’t have to know Alexander’s story to know where flying a plane will lead.

But, before we can get to that tragedy, Bobby Kennedy is killed.  Jackie goes into whispering hysterics, with her famous line, “they’re killing Kennedys now” and she wants out of the family.  “She’s free of the Kennedys,” Ari tells Costa, now fully able to go after what he wants.  Jackie’s priest doesn’t make it easy, giving her a supreme Catholic guilt trip, throwing in her dead husband, dead son and even Ari’s living wife.  She’s whispers back a fairly long speech that begs for a commercial to stop viewers from falling asleep.

Teddy Kennedy is dispatched to Greece to bargain Jackie’s marriage to Ari.  Ari insists on a prenup in a business-like fashion.  Here’s a failing of the writing.  Until now, Ari has actually seemed enchanted by Jackie, so turning him into a harsh mercenary in just one scene is awfully jarring.  But don’t worry folks, in to clean up that mess is Maria Callas.  Ari tries to blunt her shrieking by saying Jackie needs him.  “She needs your money, while I need youuuuuuuuu,” she insists.  “You are a coward, you are afraid of love,” Maria rails, alternating a scream-a-thon with her own guilt trip about how she’s lost her voice and now his love, which he certainly doesn’t have for Jackie.  “Jackie’s done well, finding a grandfather for her children,” our beloved Jane heckles.

Onassis, with sudden gray hair, marries Jackie and declares it’s the happiest day of his life.  When Jackie whispers complaints about how the American press has turned on her, Ari says, “the only place you’ll find secrecy is in the dictionary.”  Ari said that?  I have trouble believing he could ever come up with a line that clever.  Ari is actually very good with the kids, though Jackie’s queeny pal Billy Baldwin isn’t impressed by Ari’s lack of finesse (if the limp-wrist act doesn’t peg him as one of Jackie’s gay boys, when he hears that breakfast is one and rushes off saying, “ooooh, sausage” certainly will). 

Costa is summoned by Maria, crying her mascara into a Dali painting on her face because she can’t understand how Ari has betrayed her.  I am confident in my assumption that this scene only exists because the final part of the movie without Jane’s performance would be an awfully whispered dull affair.

Back in the questionable writing, Ari seems to be back in love with Jackie, lavishing gifts on her because he wants her to be “totally dependent on me.”  Costa tries to keep Ari in line, explaining to him how he managed to spent $20 million in one year.  “She’s a poor girl from a rich family, I’m trying to give her what she needs,” Ari argues, determined to live up to his end of the bargain and keep her spoiled with luxury.  But, she’s not fulfilled because Ari is never around (which in real life was apparently made her quite happy). 

Ari has another argument on Alexander’s plane that ends with Alexander refusing to pay homage to his step-mother and as Alexander flies off, Ari yells, “spoiled kid!  I was only trying to teach you how to do business!”  Don’t worry, we’re getting closer to capping Alexander’s cliche. 

When Jackie refuses to wait for him on his island, he follows her to New York, where in the middle of a lavish party, Ari very obnoxiously loads her with jewelry in front of the guest, much to her horror.  This cues an argument where Jackie whispers some nonsense about how he’s never around when she needs him and he counters that she should stay in Greece.  He gets back at her by taking Maria to Maxim’s where she delights in his vulgar thigh-grabbing under the table with the press snapping pictures.  What does Jackie do?  She flies to Paris and takes him to Maxim’s, sitting at the same table.  They resume their argument about how neither is getting what he or she wanted out of the marriage.  Ari goes to Roy Cohn (Garrick Hogan) of all people, to try to figure out how to divorce her.  “I don’t mind a million or two, but I won’t be looted and I won’t have lawyers dancing on my grave,” Ari chides Roy.  Then what the hell is he doing with Roy Cohn? 

Ari is trying his best to divorce Jackie and not lose a fortune when Alexander takes off in his plane.  Costa has to deliver the bad news: yup, plane crash.  We saw it coming many scenes ago, but Ari is surprised.  Alexander is not instantly killed, lying in the hospital while Raul Julia gets his first chance to cry (would it be a lead TV performance without tears?).  “Why would you do this to me?  How did this happen?  You were everything.  I’m human.  I make mistakes, but there was always love in my heart,” he says in a monologue before Alexander finally does die.  He refuses Jackie’s sympathy, going instead to Maria for succor, and to share his theories that the Greek gods have done this to him, “because I squandered their gifts.” 

Now Onassis has gone beyond gray, straight to a full shock of white hair, but the addition of a bit of jowls doesn’t make Raul Julia look at all like Onassis did near the end of his life.  Costa wants him to get back to business, to teach daughter Christina the family business, but he’s too grief-stricken.  Even his beloved sister can’t snap him out of the funk.  It gets worse, because his doctor tells him he has a fatal illness.  As he loses control of his muscles, Christina has to tape his eyelids open, though he can still smoke a cigar.  Ari starts in on the fortune cookie business savvy his father taught him and Christina takes to it pretty well.  They bond over mutual hatred for Jackie, who will not give into his divorce demands, instead waiting for him to die. 

In full (but cheap-looking) old-man prosthetics, Ari is dying in a hospital bed when Maria comes in incognito to visit.  He admits his cruelty to her and his love, “as much as I knew how.”  It’s actually a touching scene, a rare chance instance where Jane gives the scene over to Raul.  If the movie hasn’t painted Jackie as villainous so broadly enough, her pre-written speech delivered on airplane steps makes her a real bitch!  The Onassis family gets back at her by stuffing her into the back of the funeral line.  Costa stands over his coffin and gives him a cold send-off, saying “you were the best of men and the worst.”  Jackie plants a kiss on the coffin and that’s it.  I mean, that’s it for the movie.  Other than a shot of Raul dancing on the rock again, the movie actually ends with Jackie and not Ari.  Cheated by the Kennedys even in his own miniseries!

Prince or bastard, one thing Ari Onassis was not was two-dimensional.  But, as portrayed by Raul Julia, it’s a struggle to get even those two dimensions from him.  Once again, it’s Jane Seymour who takes mediocre trash and makes it sparkle.  She’s working from the same script as uninterested Raul and very bored (and boring) Francesca, but she manages to make her scenes work.  Then again, Maria Callas was probably the most exciting person in the Onassis story, though Jackie O will always be its centerpiece.

Here’s a miniseries so bad even the laughter it evokes from being stupid end after a while and leave us with a whole bunch of hammy actors running around Hollywood with seemingly no purpose.  With a title like “The Users,” and a story set in Hollywood, all one can do is sit back and watch the cliches arrive, one after another.

We start on a movie set where start Tony Curtis is having a hissy fit because his scene is not working.  In a tank top, jeans and a cowboy hat, Tony already looks past his prime, but he’s the leading man.  Producer George Hamilton is more patient than the director, calling a wrap for the day.  George heads off to his trailer to call agent Red Buttons, relaxing in the hot tub with two women, because he wants the galleys of an upcoming book.  Before hanging up, George tells Red to get out of the hot tub.  “You can’t afford to shrink.”  “Jealous?” Red answers?

Listening to this whole conversation is Jaclyn Smith, a hooker who charges $100 per night.  Hey, it’s Arizona.  George wants to hire her for a night with Tony Curtis, but doesn’t want Tony to know she’s a working girl.  Apparently, Tony needs a confidence boost because he hasn’t had a movie in seven years, since his wife died, and this comeback is his last chance. 

Pause.

Okay, including the title sequence, we’re about 10 minutes into the movie.  Already, we have Tony Curtis as an over-the-hill leading man (true enough), George Hamilton as a slimy producer (drop producer, true enough), Red Buttons as a lusty agent and Jaclyn Smith as a hooker.  In a movie about Hollywood produced by Dominick Dunne.  Is the smell of delicious cheese as pungent for you as it is for me?  “The Users” is going to be mind-melting fun…I can’t wait!

Jacklyn, looking so young and dewy, plays her part with Tony at George’s party that night.  Hooker or not, she’s well-read when it comes to Tony and his career.  “Do you want me to name every picture you’ve ever made in chronological order?” she asks.  “Don’t, please don’t.”  He’s hooked.  Tony kicks everyone out so he can be alone with Jaclyn.  Tony’s pillow talk is all about his worries in doing the next day’s love scene, but of course Jaclyn is fixing that. 

The next morning, Jaclyn returns the money to George Hamilton.  She says Tony was able to “perform,” and he doesn’t understand why he’s getting a refund.  “You’ll see,” she says with a knowing glint.  Tony repeats the scene from the day before (in a different costume) and with Jaclyn watching, he pulls it off spectacularly.  Even he’s excited by how well he did, and he attributes it to her, but now he’s worried about what he’ll do when he shoots the rest in Hollywood without her.  He wants her to go with him, but as what?  “Agent?  Cook?  Housekeeper?  Companion?  Lover?”  “How about all of them?”  She says she’ll get back to him.

Care to know why Jaclyn leads the lifestyle she does in Arizona?  She has a sick mother.  Well, of course she does!  Mom knows all about Jaclyn’s evening activities, and she also takes the blame for ruining her life, having to resort to prostitution to pay the bills.  She wants Jaclyn to go to Hollywood with Tony, making her promise one thing: “When you get there, let ’em KNOW you’re there.” 

Jaclyn and her one bag (to Tony’s huge haul of luggage) arrive at Tony’s Hollywood mansion.  On the piano are glossy shots of Garland, Sinatra and others, as well as Tony’s daughter, Michelle Phillips, also an actress, who has a checkered past with dad.  Tony offers a tour, but Jaclyn wants to see “the most important room” and he carries her up to the bedroom. 

Michelle, in fact, shows up in the very next scene and as soon as she walks through the door, she tells Jaclyn she knows she’s “special.”  How?  Is there some particular way she opened the door with a dish rag over her shoulder that speaks of genius?  The two chat over wine and Jaclyn says she loves Tony.  Michelle looks like she’s ready to pounce at that, but instead says, “I think you mean that” and then begs Jaclyn to get Tony “back on the scene.”  The two are instant chums, though there’s something strangely manipulative in Michelle. 

Jaclyn and Michelle have lunch at one of the “really in places,” where Michelle has to get past lecherous Red Buttons before finding her table.  Jaclyn is curious to know why all of the glamour doesn’t matter to Michelle.  She’s been “hustled” too many times.  However, she is in love, but with a married man whose wife has the money.  They then go on a jaunt to Rodeo Drive, where they bump into George Hamilton and his wife, Carrie Nye.  It’s an uncomfortable moment for all, though Michelle pulls them through, buys Jaclyn a gold necklace and treats her to a spa day.  It’s here that Jaclyn tells Michelle the truth about how she and Tony met (and of course that she gave the money back).  And here’s the kicker: Tony didn’t need to get it up, he just needed someone to talk to.  So, we officially cannot have any bad feelings towards Jaclyn because they just talked and she gave back the money, so the love is real.  Isn’t that a neat little package?

Into the restful spa sweeps Joan Fontaine, a Hollywood stalwart who gets paid to make sure people are seen in the right places.  We need a slumming legend (more slumming than Red Buttons), and she fits the bill, a little older, a little heavier, but having a grand time as the mile-a-minute gabber (her sister would take more dignified miniseries roles: the Queen Mother, Grand Duchess Marie of Russia and Wallis Simpson’s Aunt Bessie and keep the camp to a minimum–Joan isn’t holding back).  Jaclyn decides she will use Joan’s help to get herself known.  After the girls day out, Michelle reminds Jaclyn that if the picture is a bomb, she’s in for something “pretty stormy.”  “I’ve been rained on before,” Jaclyn retorts. 

Tony is getting a massage from Michael Baseleon, who offers to do Jaclyn next.  Jaclyn wants some gossip from him, and she sure as hell gets it.  He has a looser tongue than an toothless Alabama grandmother.  He tells her that the frost between Michelle and Carrie is due to the fact that Michelle’s boyfriend is…you guessed it…George Hamilton!  “We all use each other,” he tells her and Jaclyn grabs at it.  She wants him to spread the word that she and Tony are “terribly happy.”  It’s true, but she wants to make sure everyone knows it. 

Having learned amazingly fast, Jaclyn has already arranged a lunch for Tony with Joan, so he can be seen.  She intends to make sure this picture is a hit.  Jaclyn has all sorts of plans for her life with Tony, but he asks just to sit quietly for five minutes…and they do!  They literally sit for five wasted minutes of screen time.  And then he opines that they should get married that night.  And they do!  On their wedding night, he says he doesn’t care that she was a hooker because everyone is a hooker, “some more, some less, including me.”  “You know what that makes us?  The perfect couple!”  With dialogue like this, how can you not keep watching?

Jaclyn goes to a pool party at Joan Fontaine’s.  Before they even start, Joan quotes her fee of $500 a week, which Jaclyn can’t afford, but Joan is willing to wait because “putting a hooker in the A group, it’s my dream come true!”  Joan has a whole plan, from redoing her house to redoing her wardrobe.  One scheme is to take dresses from stores on approval  and get a studio dressmaker to do exact copies, returning the original.  This is an insider’s guide to Hollywood?  They do that in Little Rock! 

They can’t keep us in suspense any longer.  Are you dying to know how fabulously successful Tony’s comeback movie is?  I know I am (well, not really, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt).  It’s screened for the executives and it’s a big wonderful spectacular…bomb.  The head of the studio wants 30 minutes chopped off.  To make it worse, said exec tells the director and producer he wants to work with them again, “just bring me a hot star.”  Oh, man, let’s home that doesn’t leak out to Tony (the character…oh, wait, and the actor himself, he did have a jolly big ego), because it will take every trick Jaclyn is learning to pull him out of that hole. 

There’s a crushingly boring scene where Jaclyn visits Michelle at her pool, where Michelle holds court in a shirt and heels.  They discuss the reason why George wants Michelle when he has Carrie.  “My talents,” she says and we know what she’s talking about.  Jaclyn then says she wants the book George wanted as a vehicle for Tony. 

Carrie and George throw a party for Tony.  Michelle has her boy toy with her.  When Tony asks, “what do you do?” the boy toy says, “I tan.”  He, at least he’s honest.  Dumb, but honest.  Jaclyn oozes around the room.  She starts with George, making sure he keeps her secret and she will keep his about Michelle.  Then she moves on to Red Buttons, angling for the book everyone wants (“Rogue’s Gallery”).  He propositions her with the damn hot tub.  “I could help you turn the pages,” he says to Jaclyn when she says she might like it as much as reading the book.

John Forsythe is there, sizing up Jaclyn as a mover in an instant, and she tries to get the dirt on him from Joan.  Oh, and for comic value, Judy Landers is there, as a character named Merry.  Her presence makes this scene an instant rip-off of the party scene in “All About Eve” and she’s Miss Caswell.  It all ends badly the studio head tells Tony the picture is terrible.  We’ve been told about 14 times that he’ll react extremely poorly if the movie is not a hit.  Well, bring it on!

He goes to a nightclub where men seem to be the only denizens and Douglas Warner slithers over to him immediately, telling him he’s a writer and has the perfect screenplay for Tony.  Naturally, the script is back at Douglas’ apartment.  Sooooooo, when Tony is upset he goes gay?  That’s the big secret?  It’s not like he tries to kill himself or someone else or blow up The Brown Derby or steal Chasen’s chili from Elizabeth Taylor’s plate! 

At least this “twist” temporarily woke up a movie in danger of putting itself to sleep.

Jaclyn goes to Red’s hot tub, which I hope has been cleaned for all he talks about it.  She wants to know how much the book will cost.  After toying with her for a while, he says he’s already sold the movie rights to John Forsythe.  Cue Joan Fontaine, who shows up to distract Red while Jaclyn sneaks a copy of the book out of Red’s office.  Damn, she’s good!  Smartest Arizona hooker this side of…well, all the other Arizona hookers.  As if the movie couldn’t be ANY more obvious, Jaclyn comes home to find a party invitation at John’s. 

Racing up the stairs to tell Tony all about what she’s pulled off, she finds him with Douglas.  “If you put this scene in a movie, no one would believe it,” Douglas wryly notes.  Even worse, Jaclyn tells him he could have told her and she would have understood.  If that were the case, dear friends, wouldn’t she have stayed instead of flying out the door at top speed?

When she returns home, she finds out that Tony has tried to kill himself (and if you want the laugh of a lifetime, wait until you see him trying to pour from a teapot with bandaged wrists).  He would have succeeded if the masseur hadn’t come for his usual appointment. 

Off to John’s party they go.  The theme is the gardens at Versailles.  Huh?  John pegs Jaclyn’s earrings as on approval.  Party scene, take two.  Jaclyn looks radiant in a fur huge gown.  Red asks her how she likes the galleys of the book.  “The only galleys are on boats,” she retorts.  Everyone is there, Joan for fun and even Tony’s little boyfriend, there with a producer now.  Jaclyn hides out in a room where she knows John will find her, and he does.  She gets down to business quickly, mentioning Tony would be perfect for the lead in “Rogue’s Gallery.”  He knows her past and is astounded she’s not ashamed.  “After a few months in this town, I’m rather proud of it,” she quips.  John plays crystal ball and tells her that even if Tony makes a comeback in “Rogue’s Gallery” she’ll still need to prop him up again and again because she lacks money.  Hmmm, she’s gotten this far without it.  John basically wants her for himself, but not as a lover.  “Power and romance rarely mix,” she tells her.  “We all exist to be used,” he tells her, as the cliche parade that is called a scene here churns on.  Both of these pros play it with eyebrows raised and bland sincerity.  Jaclyn wants the “Rogue’s Gallery” author to come to dinner and that means owing John a favor and she doesn’t mind that and the dip at the party is made with too much milk and everyone gets sick and the house falls off the hill and disaster ensues and California slides into the ocean.  Okay, okay, noting beyond “she doesn’t mind” happens, but I wish it did because damn, it’s getting so dull!

Michelle and George steal a few minutes together to plan stealing a few minutes together.  If they fling one more double entendre at each other, someone is going to end up with a broken nose.  They agree to meet in the sauna, which has a lock on the door from the outside, always trouble.    Carrie follows her cheating husband and confronts them half dressed.  She lowers the boom that the only way George can produce the film is if Michelle agrees to star in it.  More users, we get it. 

From that party, we go right to the party Jaclyn throws for the author of “Rogue’s Gallery,” who has casting approval.  Did they simply change the sets around the actors?  That might have been cheaper than moving the actors to a new set.  But, the plans are foiled when the author shows up, or seemingly so.  John, suddenly gone stupid, tells Jaclyn where the author is without realizing it (everything but the number of the bungalow in Santa Barbara) and she hightails it over there, leaving her own party. 

The author who has been at the center of this whole story is Darren McGavin, entering nearly two hours into the movie.  “You wouldn’t come to my party, so I decided to come to yours.”  “There’s no party here,” he says.”  “Not yet,” says the ex-hooker as she pours herself a bourbon to impress him.  I hope in quoting these lines, the four-year-old who wrote them get some pleasure out of hearing them again.  Jaclyn thinks her best weapon his honesty and admits her past, which also impresses Darren.  Darren swears that he never gets drunk, no matter how many he has.  Jaclyn bets him that he can get drunk, going drink for drink with him, and then can’t actually “perform.”  The stakes in the bet?  She wants the role for her husband and if he wins…”neither one of us loses.”  That hardly seems fair.  Tony gets a movie role and Darren gets a few minutes in the sack with a pro?

As you would expect, because he’s a human being Darren actually does pass out, losing the bet.  She sweeps out once he wakes up, snatching her fur and telling him her husband will be wonderful in the movie.  When she arrives at home, Tony is cheery because the party went so well.  He doesn’t seem to mind that she was out all night.  When she tells him that she’s secured him the lead in “Rogue’s Gallery,” Tony shows the most emotion he has so far.  He’s excited and then curious as to how she worked it out, but she doesn’t tell him.  In fact, she tells him it’s “goodbye.”  Her speech about parting is awfully confusing.  Something about both of them having what they want, no regrets, best time of their lives coming.  I can’t say I quite understood it.  He has his part and she’s going “where I belong.”  That would be John Forsythe’s bigger mansion, of course. 

It’s Oscar time!  “Rogue’s Gallery” is a gigantic hit and both Tony and Michelle are nominated.  They arrive together and the crowd of extras jump up and down so hard they must have been fed sugar pills.  Tony and Jaclyn meet on the red carpet and neither is upset.  “Did I ever say thanks?” Tony asks and confesses his love for her.  John and Jaclyn are interviewed by Army Archerd, perplexing because John is only the movie’s executive producer and when was the last time you saw one of those interviewed?  Army asks Jaclyn if she’s proud and she says, “you know, I’m not actually in the business.”  Freeze, cut and print.

Help me out here: is the movie titled “The Users” because of the characters and their actions or because it uses plots from so many other movies (“All About Eve, “Sunset Boulevard,” “A Star is Born,” you name a Hollywood-based movie and “The Users” finds a way to rip it off)?  Watching Jaclyn Smith play a bad girl is kind of neat, but she’s so damn wholesome that she’s not fully successful.  All of the other wax figures just say their lines and collect checks, except for Joan Fontaine, who, by that point in her career, had nothing to lose.

If you want, you can look at “Captains and the Kings” as a very thinly-veiled miniseries about the Kennedys, but that’s undermining the quality of the piece.  It makes it sound cheap and tawdry, like the actual Kennedy miniseries (all 403 of them).  Sure, the hero is an Irish immigrant who scrapes his way to untold riches and…well, you know the rest.  “Captain and the Kings” is a terrific homage to the American dream, both sides of it, and owes plenty to other giants of industry like Rockefeller and Carnegie.  Its central character, Joseph Armagh, is the embodiment of both sides, a great hero with great flaws.  Expertly written and free enough of the clutter that would have schmaltzed this up if it had been produced a decade later (hell, even half a decade later), “Captain and the Kings” is a true classic of the genre, as American as they come in sincerity and opulence, two other sides of the American dream.

Though “Rich Man, Poor Man” pre-dated “Captains and the Kings” by about seven months and thus earns the distinction of being the groundbreaking miniseries, the one that started it all, I would say that “Captain and the Kings” is actually a better cornerstone.  “Rich Man, Poor Man” certainly set up the future of the romance miniseries, but its scope is rather small, staying tight on its three lead characters.  “Captain and the Kings” is history and adventure, a fore running to the decade-spawning and character-driven epics to follow in the coming twenty years or so.  It also foreshadows the seedier side of the miniseries genre, the Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz sagas, full of greed and lust, which are a whole lot of fun.  Therefore, “Captains and the Kings” is far more comprehensive an effort than “Richard Man, Poor Man” even if it’s been more forgotten over time. 

All good epics start with a tragedy, giving the hero something to make up for his whole life long.  It’s 1857, New York harbor and a ship of Irish immigrants is waiting to get in.  A young boy and his two siblings are on board with their mother, who promptly dies after five minutes.  Priest John Carradine tells the young boy that the ship is being sent back to Ireland, and he’ll have none of that, this plucky smart youth.  He tosses his siblings overboard with a life preserver. 

The city’s homeless feed them and put them on a train to find their father.  They show up at the address they remember, with a sign outside that says “Irish Allowed.”  Grumpy frumpy Ann Southern runs the place, milking the Irish accent and a cane for all they are worth, but she has more bad news for the kids: Dad is dead too.  The youth decides that he can no longer be a child and support his siblings.  He deposits them in a convent run by Sister Celeste Holm.  He tells his siblings to lose their Irish accents, to become Americans.  He then goes off to work in a coal mine, doing backbreaking labor during the day and studying at night.  The kid isn’t stupid, cunning enough to realize that Ray Bolger runs the town and all of its crime, offering his services.

Four years later, our boy has matured into Richard Jordan, still carrying illegal goods for Ray Bolger, playing his few scenes to the back of the balcony.  Ray can’t imagine what Richard does with his free time and books.  “I’m the secret lover of a lady librarian,” he says.  He gets his books from rich Joanna Pettet, on whom he has a crush.  He tells a priest he doesn’t covet her, he “adores her” and intends to someday live her lifestyle. 

Joanna may be rich, but her life isn’t perfect.  Hubby Vic Morrow is a drunk who beats their young daughter.  Vic churns through his intro scene with an accent anything but Irish, blasting a lot of hot air as his wife because he intends to be Senator.  He drunkenly goes to make an oath on the Bible, which Joanna considers blasphemy and they fight over…at the top of the staircase.  Yup, she takes a tumble down the stairs, killing the child she was about to have, though she survives.  It was a boy, and Vic knows how much she wanted a son.  Arguing with his wife’s doctor, who is no fan of his, Vic remembers a boy at the orphanage.  He wonders…

As resilient as ever, Richard is attacked by three men for his money belt and beats the crap out of all three without breaking a sweat.  Nothing stops him from delivering Ray Bolger’s illegal money.  Ray knows about the three guys, “a-moanin’ and a-groanin'” in an alley, but he’s impressed by the fact that Richard never spills the beans or has any trouble with the illegal activities.  Ray offers him a job, at $20 a week, no less, but he turns it down.  It’s not part of his plan.

When Vic wondered about the kids in the orphanage, it was Richard’s siblings he was talking about.  Joanna and Sister Celeste Holm try to get him to agree to let them be adopted, but he refuses.  He has always wanted to keep his siblings together, the three of them as a family.  Despite the soft lighting just on Joanna’s pretty eyes, he keeps saying no, but he can’t refuse a visit to her home, to see how she lives, to see what he’s turning down.  Thuggish Vic is in bed with a maid when Joanna comes hope, drunk and ornery.  Having finished with the maid, Vic argues with Richard about the kids, Richard still standing firm against the adoption.  Richard won’t let the kids live in Vic’s home, “until it’s up for sale.”  Vic even tries to buy the kids, which infuriates Richard, but makes it worse by telling Richard he’ll never amount to anything.  Richard has a comeback to Vic’s high-handed attitude (not as good as when Vic calls him “smug-mouth potato boiler”) because he knows Vic has made his money from selling slaves, and this is 1861 after all. 

Having realized money is the only way to make it in America, he wants it quickly.  He pays off Sister Celeste to take care of the kids for a year or more, and she promises to care for them as long as she lives.  He then steals Ray Bolger’s money, writing him a letter that he’s doing so, promising to bring it back with interest in a year.  On his way to the train, he’s detained by Sargent Martin Kove, who tries to force him into the army, but he knocks him out and still can’t get to the train because Lebanese pick pocket/chatterbox Harvey Jason stops him, figuring of all the men in the crowd, he stands the best chance of getting on the train with Richard.  He’s right, for they do get on the train, but just as he’s describing the best way to get rich, Harvey’s leg gets stuck and almost amputated, but Richard does a bit of daring and saves his new buddy. 

Impressed by Richard’s bravery is Charles Durning, slurping down a bottle of whiskey and renaming Harvey’s character to make him sound less like a “heathen.”  He’s another bombastic loud mouth.  Richard can’t escape them!  Richard tells Charles of his ambition, and after Charles stops choking on his liquor and laughing, he actually agrees.  The two gab the whole train ride, where Richard reveals himself to be educated and ambitious.  “You’ve got all the makings of a good scoundrel,” Charles admires.  Charles is something of a big deal in Titusville, and he takes Richard and Harvey under his wing, insisting that Richard is responsible for Harvey.  The lure of Titusville is its oil, Richard’s surest way to success. 

Talk about your attempt at scene stealing, Charles introduces Richard to “Martinique,” not his wife, but the woman living with him, played by Barbara Parkins like a slutty Mrs. Danvers.  Also living at Charles’ is Beverly D’Angelo, not his daughter, but a hooker he bought.  “She loves me like a father in every way but one,” he boasts.  Charles decides to teach Richard everything, but for Richard, it’s all about money and since Charles won’t pay him much, he decides to work in the fields, against Charles’ advice. 

Richard takes the worst possible job he can, hauling nitro glycerine around, while he learns everything he can and tends to his now-hobbled friend Harvey, who has caught the attention of Miss Beverly.  Using their combined skills (Harvey is a banker), Richard decides to buy up oil field options for his new company.  In less than a year, Richard is able to pay Ray Bolger back, with interest.  Ray notes that Richard paid him back in less than half the time promised, which reminds us that Richard may be hungry for money, but he’s a man of his word, so much so that he’s able to wheedle an exorbitant amount of money from Ray to give to Harvey to buy up the oil field options (remember, he’s the hero, so he’s once again promised to pay Ray back, even though this money isn’t stolen). 

Even nature can’t get in the way of Richard’s drive.  He and a fellow nitro glycerine hauler are doing their work when a convenient avalanche kills the other guy.  Later in the day, he’s dressed in his finest, visiting with Barbara Parkins, ogling all the books in the library.  The difference between the money Charles has and Richard will have is in these books: Charles told Barbara to buy the finest books, but he doesn’t care what the books are.  Richard knows all of the authors and what is IN the books.  Okay, okay, it’s a bit on the heavy-handed side, but it keeps Richard human.  No one ever talked about Joe Kennedy’s library. 

Charles proposes another scheme, this one requiring Richard to dress up in brand-new finery to get into a “venture” with Peter Donat.  At $2000 per month, Richard accepts the job without even finding out what the job is.  “The alternative to the success of this job is not failure, but death,” Peter warns him, but Richard is undaunted, asking only to write out a sort of will.  It turns out the job is to run guns during the height of the Civil War.  Richard isn’t afraid of that. 

He then gets a visit on a stormy night from va-va-vooming Barbara Parkins, who pegs him as a virgin.  With serious intent, she decides to solve that problem.  It’s the least romantic deflowering I can think of in any miniseries.  She starts kissing his chest, but he stops her.  “Before you take off all my clothes, take off yours,” he commands.  The camera pans to the window and then back to the two, now finished, Barbara resting her head on Richard’s sprawling chest, as we’ve seen so many times in the genre.  Barbara tells a somewhat cryptic history of her time with Charles, and that they do not have sex.  “His needs are very simple, and, as you can tell, mine are not,” she purrs, saying that she’s been waiting for a man like him.  This one sexual experience has given Richard sexual balls as well, and he wants Barbara for his own, but she shoots that one down, refusing to be owned by anyone.  Vamping the hell out of the scene, standing naked at the window, she tells him she’ll be his any time he wants her, but he is never to ask what hold Charles has over her ever again. 

Peter takes Richard to meet Pernell Roberts, the Union Colonel who is part of the gun-running scheme.  His is initially afraid to be caught as a traitor, but receiving $50K for his part in it soothes those worries.  Richard turns out to be a better deal-maker than anyone expects.  That night, it’s off to the theater to see Edwin Booth (Peter notes that he’s never seen him, but has met his brother, John Wilkes Booth, “excellent”–yes, we know, it’s still the Civil War).  What I’m not mentioning here is the way all of these deals go down.  It’s beautiful writing (we have to thank Taylor Caldwell’s novel as well as the writers of the script), very cleverly handled, like a mystery novel. 

With the gun running episode successful, Richard returns to visit his siblings, Sister Celeste Holm and Joanna Pettet.  Richard and Joanna have a talky scene about, well, not a whole lot, and she insists that he better not be in love with him.  He never has been.  To make sure we understand, the next scene has Barbara accosting him on the doorstep with an open mouth.  Charles’ daughter is in town, and the house rule is that when she is in residence, Beverly isn’t.  They stash her in a hotel.  Hanging out the window that evening, she spies Harvey on the street and beckons him to her room.  Beverly keeps trying to take her clothes off and seduce him, but nervous Harvey, like Richard, is too focused on the financial rewards of life.  He’s also scared of fooling around with her because Charles won’t like it.  “I didn’t ask you up here to do anything bad,” Beverly mopes, “it’s just that I’m so lonely.”  To make sure he understands her flirtations are more pure, she gives him a token to a whorehouse, which he says he will keep “forever.” 

Charles’ daughter is lovely Blair Brown, a belle pure as snow, especially coming from such a hard-boiled tough as her conniving father.  Charles makes it clear that Blair is only good enough for someone high-toned (Charles would play Honey Fitz later on his career, Rose Kennedy’s father, in some very similar scenes).  Charles announces the gun running is over and he wants Richard to come into the oil business with him, but Richard has no money to buy stocks, all of his money in what is considered the oil-free land he and Harry have been buying.  Basically, the scene rolls on as Charles tries to screw Richard out of everything he owns, and a furious Richard storms out, which makes Charles all contrary.  He knows Richard’s land is worth a fortune, so he wants to be his partner.  Richard agrees, but on his terms.  Charles has no choice but to agree, with a few conditions of his own and a promise that he’ll “never cheat ya.”  Richard tries to angle in one last term, that Charles tell him what hold he has over Barbara, but he refuses.  At any rate, they agree.

Richard sets out to re-invent the oil industry, starting with the railroads, bringing us Robert Vaughn.  It’s here that Richard shows is darker side, getting the railroad barons to agree to ship only oil controlled by his company or those of his friends.  “That’s nasty…and I love it,” perpetual villain Robert sneers. 

Among all the scenes of corporate greed, we have to suffer through a little more pain between Harvey and Beverly.  Their scenes reek of the dippy secondary love plots in creaky musical comedies.  But, they finally do have sex and though Richard is thrilled, he knows Charles will be pissed, so he sends Harvey out the back way to avoid detection.  Unfortunately for Richard, the sex happened in his bed, so when Charles’ hulking manservant comes in, he thinks it’s Richard who has had his way with her.  A fight ensues and the manservant ends up dead, with Beverly pretending that the manservant tried to rape her.  Charles doesn’t believe that, still thinking it was Richard, but Barbara gives him a true alibi.  No one rats out Harvey, and Peter Donat steps in to save the whole mess by concocting a story where the manservant was drunk and fell out of the window. 

The biggest question is whether or not Charles and Richard can trust each other anymore.   

Blair Brown has an instant crush on Richard.  Daddy’s chaste little girl is an avowed flirt, but Richard will not allow himself to be taken in, as he promised Charles.  Late one night in the kitchen, Blair lays it on the line: she’s not looking for a husband, just fun and sex, like the arrangement he has with Barbara.  Just as Blair tells Richard she does not intend to be a virgin forever, Charles and Barbara arrive back home with Vic Morrow, Richard’s old nemesis who wanted to buy his siblings.  To make Richard jealous, Blair takes up Vic on his offer to take her back to school on his private train.  And it’s there that Blair ceases to be a virgin.

Over a pool game, Richard gets back to business, buying out George Gaynes’ company without actually spending a dime, and now the robber barons and Robert Vaughn consider him for membership in their exclusive club of fat cats. 

For the first time, we venture into real-life characters in a brief scene where President Lincoln welcomes Vic Morrow to Washington as its newest Senator.  Blair follows him to DC to drop the bomb that she’s pregnant.  This smart cookie has decided to marry a “socially prominent Protestant” man to act as the father of the baby, a man who has asked for her hand in marriage.  He can’t say no because he’s just died in battle, so Blair insists that Senator Vic forge the necessary papers to make her an instant war widow with a legitimate child on the way.  Richard and Barbara go along with the scheme (whether they believe it or not doesn’t matter), but Charles gets rip-roaring drunk, going for the gold with a hoot of a scene and then dies. 

Charles’ will is a hoot.  He leaves an awfully lot of money to his servants and employees, $50K to Beverly, who can now marry Harvey, and $150K to Barbara.  She is now free to tell her story: she’s part black from parentage in Jamaica, killed the son of the Jamaican government who tried to make her a slave and was taken to safety by Charles.  She will go to Europe and seek a rich man, telling Richard to stay and marry Blair.  Charles leaves the bulk of his fortune to Richard, with the stipulation that he manage Blair’s money.  With Richard and Blair now tied together by this condition, Richard wants to marry Blair, but she refuses.  “It’s just too late!”

Now that Richard is sole owner of Charles’ oil company, he’s invited join the robber barons on Good Friday, 1865, just as Lincoln is shot.

Fast forward to 1873.  Richard is fabulously wealthy in his massive garish house, finding that money isn’t enough for him.  He wants power!  So, he gets Harvey to buy a bunch of politicians.  Speaking of politicians, his neighbors are Vic’s family, with now-grown daughter Patty Duke. 

Also grown are Richard’s siblings.  Katherine Crawford is first seen at confession, saying she wants to join a convent in Baltimore.  Brother David Huffman, at Harvard, is bent on labor reform, pushing unionization on the workers, much to Richard’s chagrin.  Richard sees the irony in this: David is “weeping for the downtrodden” without “having worked a day in his life.”  He quips that he should have never left his siblings so long in the church.  Unfortunately for David, he’s caught in the middle of a labor battle where Richard’s goons mow down a bunch of workers before being saved by Jenny Sullivan, a mine worker herself, who sends David to his brother to report on the heinous crime.

Joanna is dying, so she gets a deathbed scene with Richard.  She had once asked Richard not to love her, but now she admits that she’s loved him all along, and he admits the same.  Geez, it only took a few decades!  The conversation takes a creepy turn when Joanna tells Richard that her daughter Patty also loves him and she wants Richard to take her safely from obnoxious Vic’s house and to marry her.  It’s one hell of a deathbed scene, full of halting whispered sentences delivered only with the light from a nearby fire.  As soon as Richard agrees to marry Patty, Joanna dies peacefully. 

Rather than actually grieve for his wife, Vic decides to lambaste Richard, accusing him of having an affair with his wife.  The two have a gigantic fight, and of course old alkie Vic is no match for strapping Richard.  Stopped from beating him to a pulp, Richard declares, “I won’t kill him.  I’ll destroy him, and by God he’ll wish I had killed him!”  That makes for a great cliffhanger as the episode ends.

Vic chases Richard, who asks him for Patty’s hand in marriage, which prompts Vic to think that it’s Patty Richard has wanted all along.  Richard doesn’t bother correcting him.

His siblings are still proving a problem.  Richard and David have a blowout over the labor issue, where David sounds like like any labor organizer of the 1870s, ending with the capper that he feels Richard made all of his money only for himself, not his siblings.  Well, he may not be entirely wrong.  After all, we do have a flawed hero here.  It’s possible Richard had his siblings in mind, but also himself.  The argument ends with Richard cutting David out of his life and David vowing that he’ll be a permanent thorn in his side over the labor issue, even from afar.  Katherine has been listening to all of this while praying upstairs for the courage to leave Richard and join the convent.  The causes Richard’s second argument in ten minutes.  If anyone else arrives, the poor man will lose his voice, not to mention he’s fast running out of cliches (his siblings are so dull and I get the feeling the writers agree).  “Sean can go to hell and you…can go to Jesus!” Richard bellows at the end of the argument, with Katherine playing herself on the floor.  At least he ended on a grandiose note.

The problem of labor takes over for a while.  The governor, the railroads and management gang up on the workers, with David and Jenny at the center of it.  David is a fierce orator.  He actually castigates the workers at a meeting for forming a mob because that “invites suppressive action from government.”  A different tactic is needed. 

In 1880 and Patty, who knows she’s stuck in a marriage springing from a deathbed promise, has given birth to four children, and now Patty’s father Vic is marrying Blair.  Not only does he think Blair is too good for Vic, but Richard has been keeping a dossier on the Senator that he intends to use at some point, to utterly destroy him.  That might make his marriage a little uncomfortable.  Harvey hopes to blunt this action by reminding Richard of this, but Richard says that what Patty thinks means absolutely nothing to him.  Richard is becoming far more of a flawed hero.

Six months later, Richard’s plan has worked so well that Vic is politically neutered and about to be destroyed financially because the government is demanding “recompense.”  Drunk as hell, Vic spews a whole speech at Richard, not knowing it’s Richard who has ruined him, but he soon finds out!  Vic pulls a gun and says he’s going to make his daughter “a widow,” but Richard is calm, even telling him to wait for a thunderclap in order to shoot so his daughter and grandchildren will never know.  But Vic can’t pull the trigger.  Having thoroughly destroyed Vic, Richard literally tosses him out of the house into the violent storm. 

David is sent to prison on a fake charge of inciting a gang of men to blow up a train and sentenced to hang.  Jenny, baby in tow, begs David to contact Richard to help, but he refuses.  So, she goes herself.  Richard agrees to help only if Jenny agrees never to tell anyone he has done so.  When Robert Vaughn wonders why Richard has not gone after the culprits of train bombing with more venom, he claims it’s not because of his brother, but for his son.  Why?  Because he wants him to be the first Irish Catholic President (that does indeed sound familiar) and an uncle who was executed will not be a help.  Robert retorts that “he has as much chance as little black Sambo.”  That’s certainly laying it on the line.  Richard and Robert even agree to marry their small children at some future date. 

Vic dies in the gutter one rainy night (it always rains when he’s around, have you noticed that?) and even President Garfield expresses his sympathy, introducing Richard to Senator Henry Fonda.  He’s a problem for the robber barons because he’s pro-labor and apparently squeaky clean. 

Things get ugly when, at the Capitol rotunda, Blair demands to see Richard.  She knows everything Richard has done and she wants her money separated from Richard’s, against the will of her father.  Richard refuses anyway because in order to disentangle their money, he would lose money and that he refuses to do.  Blair picks this moment to tell Richard that the baby of the dead fake husband was actually Vic’s.  “It seems we all wasted our best years…without love,” Richard tells Blair before grabbing her and marching her upstairs to the bedroom.  He’s always wanted her and now his reasons for not having her have all disappeared. 

Richard wants to marry Blair but she knows of his plans to put his son in the White House and she’s fine being his mistress so as not to ruin those plans.  “For the first time, everything is as it should be,” she says before doing what all miniseries lovers do, placing her head on his chest. 

An intimate dinner is thrown by Richard for just himself and Senator Henry Fonda.  Richard oozes charm at first, but Henry wants honesty, so they hash out the issues.  Henry has a bill in Congress that will help even the poorest workers by outlawing foreign workers.  Richard and his gang want the foreign labor because they come damn cheap.  Henry notes that Richard is attempting to bribe him, which Richard knows he can’t prove, and Henry has had enough.  But, Richard has a surprise waiting and calls in Harvey.  He brings a bunch of documents that would ruin Henry.  The big secret?  Henry had a mulatto grandmother.  It’s 1881 and that still carries some weight.  Henry nails this scene, his usual understated acting style a virtue in handling the character’s conflicts. 

Once Henry leaves, Richard burns the documents, his only hold over Henry, much to the admiration of Harvey, but events may have gone too far already.  Henry leaves a note at the hotel desk that he plans to kill himself and leave that curse hanging over Richard’s head forever.  That’s a delicious plot twist.  Yes, we could see it coming by Henry’s demeanor, but watching it unfold is great TV.

Wifey Patty has had Richard followed by a detective, who says Richard is completely faithful, except for “the party.”  “Stop calling her a party.  It sounds positively festive,” Patty snaps.  When she finds out it’s Blair, she’s calm and actually offers the detective a new job.  She’s figured out that Blair’s son is actually Vic’s.  She wants her detective to find out the truth she already knows, this time with physical proof.  Patty races off to Blair’s house for the showdown.  In no uncertain terms, Patty wants the affair to end, but Blair refuses, so Patty pulls out the evidence.  However, Blair doesn’t give Patty the reaction she was hoping for.  Blair doesn’t care if the truth comes out: she’ll help put it out there!  She was only holding it back while Vic was alive.  What does it matter now?  No wonder Patty won an Emmy for this performance.  She’s sensational here.  She goes from calm and definitive to wild and angry with a slow build and then to utter devastation when foiled.  By the end she’s begging Blair not to tell Richard any of this because she “fears his hate” more than anything.  It’s a gorgeous performance and a great way to handle plotting. 

In 1892, Richard’s son has grown into Perry King.  At the theater, Richard tries to push Perry into Robert Vaughn’s daughter Cynthia Syke’s arms, but Perry likes to squire around many women and doesn’t want the unintelligent Terry. 

When Richard gets home, he finds Patty drunk.  It seems she’s degenerated into an alcoholic worse than her father.  The showdown with Blair has completely undone her and forced her into this depraved lifestyle.  She hisses at Robert that he’s using his son to get back at the world for treating him badly as a child and ignoring his other kids.  She begs him to hit her.  “It’s the first time you’ll have touched me since you started sleeping with my S…T…E…P…M…O…T…H…E…R!” 

Perry is about to be kicked out of school for fighting and this angers Richard, who threatens to fight back by blackmailing the other kid’s father, who was forced to drop out of a campaign for cloudy reasons.  He dispatches Harvey to Mayor Burl Ives’ house to find out the dirt (a homosexual liaison) and gluttonous Burl is happy to oblige.  The plan, naturally, works. 

As for Perry, he’s infatuated with a Vassar girl…wait for it…she’s here…Jane Seymour!  Yup, she’s here, gracing this story with her presence!  With the help of his relative Terry Kiser (Blair’s son), he meets her in an ice cream shop where she’s on a date with another man.  Perry refuses to leave and Jane’s date’s friends gang up on him.  He leaves, but he’s just beginning his assault on Jane’s attentions.  It’s working during a Romeo and Juliet-like balcony scene when the thugs from the ice cream shop beat him up.  They douse him in alcohol and hang a sign around his neck: NO IRISH.

Though Perry wants no immediate revenge, his brother Doug Heyes doesn’t see it like that and beats the hell out of Jane’s other suitor.  Perry is still infatuated with Jane, who is definitely cracking under the full weight of his charm.  The biggest problem is that Jane is Protestant and Perry is Catholic.  As violins suddenly spring up on the soundtrack, Jane tells Perry that she can’t disobey his father, that he’s confined to a wheelchair and needs her.  But, Perry is tough and they two make out on the grass as Jane confesses her love.

And who should be playing Jane’s papa but John Houseman?  A miniseries regular, he and Jane missed out on working together in the Herman Wouk pieces, with Houseman in “Winds of War,” replaced by John Gielgud in “War and Remembrance,” while Jane took over Ali McGraw’s role for the latter.  In his spitting venomously way of speaking, John spells out all the reasons he hates the whole Armagh family (father cheats, son is a “libertine”).  He then has a convenient attack of whatever ails him and then lays the guilt on thick.  “If you choose to to be seen with this Rory Armagh (Perry King), you’ve seen the last of me…in the little time I have left.”  Are we sure he’s not playing a Jewish mother?  Even an Italian mother? 

Perry has to break the news to his father too.  Richard is thrilled, only because he assumes it’s an affair and won’t last.  He can’t countenance an actual marriage because Catholicism doesn’t allow for divorce should Perry grow tired of her, but that’s not the worst of it.  He tells of Jane’s religion, and Richard explodes in a tirade worthy of his long-gone mentor, Charles Durning.  He tries to make Perry understand that it’s only a select group of men who control the entire world, but Perry doesn’t buy it (I guess he hadn’t watched the previous five episodes).  “They exist.  I know, because I’m one of them!  And you will be too.  And those men will make you President!” Richard yells, but only if he marries a Catholic. 

In 1896, Perry graduates and they commemorate the occasion with some photographs on the lawn.  Everyone is present except sister Ann Dusenberry, who is in love with Perry’s pal Terry Kiser, making out when Perry goes to find them.  They want to get married, but that presents a problem because they are blood relatives.  No one but Richard and Patty know (which is why Patty hates him), but not Perry does.  Richard breaks the news to Terry, who races off to find Ann, dashing off to tell Patty about the impending nuptials.  Fate intervenes, as it always does in these situations, and before she can tell Patty, she is thrown from her horse and falls.  As good at “Captains and the Kings” is, it’s still a soap opera, and these helpful twists of fate have a way of settling difficult situations.  Everyone waits for Ann to return, but she doesn’t and by nightfall, they are worried and go looking for her.  Terry finds her alive, but barely.

Something has happened to her.  She’s awake, eyes open and such, but she does not understand, cannot comm…okay, I’ll say it…she has brain damage!  This part does in fact reek of the Kennedy curse, in the form of a Rosemary stand-in.  Patty, in a full rage, wants Blair and Terry out of the house, but they leave only after Terry lets loose a little bile in Richard’s direction.  He’s always liked Richard, but now he hates him as much as he hates Patty.  Before leaving, Terry demands some alone with Ann to tell her he’s leaving, not that she comprehends.  Richard and Patty take Ann to the best specialists in Europe, but no one can help.  Perry tries to gloss over it by noting Patty gets to spend time alone with Richard as she’s always wanted.

Harvey sums up a few plots for us, just because they have been dangling: Richard’s siblings are still alive and Kathleen even writes twice a month, though Harvey hides the letters.  And Harvey’s own beloved Beverly has died.

Perry and Jane get married by a Justice of the Peace and head right to bed while the Justice’s wife realizes who Perry is and formulates a plan in her mind due to Richard’s wealth. 

London, 1897.  Cantankerous Patty and Richard are at a hotel, where Patty annoys the staff, but Richard is only excited that Robert Vaughn has been appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James, which means the marriage between Perry and his daughter will be even more important.  Oh, and then there’s a letter in the same packet from the Justice of the Peace. 

Neither father nor son brings up the marriage when Perry arrives in London.  Instead, Richard takes Perry to meet the men who rule the world, telling him it may be the most important night of his life. 

Perry goes to the meeting and it’s downright bizarre.  It literally is a collection of accents, men who run the world, or at least they think they do.  If we thought Richard was getting too evil, we now have TRUE evil to make him look a little better (though he’s one of them, he says he doesn’t like them).  Just as Perry is about to tell Richard he is married to Jane, when Richard tells him of his plans, $20 million the day he marries Robert Vaughn’s daughter.  If he does not marry the girl, he’s cut out of dad’s will and dad’s life.  Perry chickens out and doesn’t tell him (although he already knows). 

Back in NYC, and back in bed, because that’s where they exist, Perry admits he didn’t tell his father about Jane, but that he will stay married to her and his father can make one of his brothers President.  The world then gets in the way when the Spanish-American War breaks out and Perry realizes the men in London made it happen. 

When Richard returns to Philadelphia, he takes his anger at the marriage out on Harvey, whom he accuses of disloyalty and everything thing else he can think of.  An impassioned speech of eternal devotion brings Richard back down to earth and he forgives Harvey.  Besides, he has a plan already to “destroy” the marriage. 

Perry and brother Doug argue about what the war means right before a montage of Teddy Roosevelt and Bill McKinley disagree about what to do with the war.  Roosevelt wins out and McKinley declares war.  Doug even joins Teddy’s Rough Riders.  Somehow the only solution to bring him back is for Perry to go after him.  I could think of about 15 reasons right now that might work better, but so be the vagaries of plot.

Have you been missing Patty Duke?  She’s losing it, sort of mad, sort of drunk, sort of guilty at Ann’s side.  Ann is still in the same medical state, and Patty tells her a fairy tale that ends with self-recrimination.  They aren’t part of the plot much anymore, but Patty is still acting up a storm. 

Two different wars are juxtaposed in quick alternating scenes.  The first is the war in Cuba, with Perry hunting down his brother.  The other is Richard going to John Houseman’s office to discuss their children.  John his aides he expects to melt Richard’s gruff exterior, but if not, he will ring his bell and they will take him forcibly.  Uh huh, two old men against Richard.  Richard has the upper hand because he knows of the marriage.  Judge John is aghast when he finds out Richard has destroyed all records of the marriage, having paid off the Justice of the Peace and the County Clerk.  Furthermore, he’s forged notes and had a handwriting expert pen them in Perry and Jane’s handwriting ending the marriage.  To sweeten the pot and get John to go along with it, he’ll pay John $10K a month. 

In Cuba, Perry looks very sexy in a shirt ripped in all the places to show off his body to maximum effect as he is forced to take up a gun and look for Doug.  It takes a while, but he finds his brother, mortally wounded so badly that Perry has to lie to him and tell him the Rough Riders have won the battle, which is far from the truth.  Watch Perry as he listens to Doug’s patriotic speech about fighting for one’s country.  He looks like he’s going to laugh the whole time.  It is over-written to say the least, the kind that makes you want to rush to your closet and dig out that flag you’ve been saving for the front lawn.  Doug dies right after giving the speech, cradled in his brothers arms. 

When Richard goes to tell Patty about Doug, she is asleep in bed, clutching a glass.  He happily fills it for her because she’s going to need it.  Before he can tell her about Doug, she admits to having told Ann about Terry (causing her to race out and get herself injured), but Richard forgives that quickly in order to deliver the really bad news.  Patty flies into a rage and then crouches on the ground, wide-eyed, talking of a curse on her family: father, daughter, son…at least for now.  Patty and Ann are packed off to a nut house and Perry brings back Doug’s body for burial. 

Perry dashes over to find Jane, but only finds the note his father has planted.  It’s a doozie, saying she had to leave him and is off to travel with her father.  Perry goes on a binge that ends him up in Chicago where a local thief and hooker snatch his wallet, but realize he’s the nephew of labor leader Uncle David.  So, they call him and David tries to talk sense into his nephew.  Perry goes home, admitting defeat to his father.  He will marry Robert Vaughn’s daughter, collect the $20 million and become President. 

It’s 1910 and Richard wants Perry to be President in 1912.  He’s been a dithering Congressman, so Richard wants the governor, whom he pays, to appoint Perry a senator (in the days before senators were directly elected).  Marriage to Cynthia has produced some heirs, so everyone has done their duties.  Perry does everything asked of him by the men in power, bending their way to kill bills in Congress he believes in. 

Then there is brother Cliff DeYoung, up to now ignored.  He’s a wastrel, flying planes and thinking of selling them to armies should a war come.  He even has a movie star girlfriend and a movie studio.  She’s a ditz.  “I cried at my own acting,” she proudly says.  “So did I,” he says sarcastically.

Sorry to end Cliff’s mirth, but Richard has had a heart attack.  Not expected to live, he’s defying the odds and even firing doctors.  The dream of Perry being President is not dying with Richard.  Cliff is his campaign manager and they bring all their cronies together to buy votes across the country.  “And send me the bill,” Perry says.  Handsome and excitable, Perry is an ideal candidate, with his father reading every paper praising his son from his bed.  Not everyone is happy, though.  Protestant preachers and the KKK aren’t happy.  Hell, the KKK does their whole cross burning thing on Richard’s lawn. 

The campaign goes very well.  It has some bumps, some people within his own party who don’t like him, but the juggernaut rolls on.  And then Jane Seymour calls out of nowhere.  Perry dashes off to see her and they fall into each other’s arms (and onto the floor) the minute she opens the door.  On his deathbed, her father admitted all he had done.  They confess eternal love to each other, but Cliff has to find a way to figure this all out. 

Blair Brown is dying.  She and Richard have stayed apart ever since Ann’s accident, but since she is dying, maybe it’s time.  Harvey is dispatched to see how she is.  Other than some bad putty wrinkles and make-up, she looks pretty damn good!  The doctor has given her a sedative, so she has to sleep, but she invites Harvey back in a week to “talk all day.”  Uh oh, don’t put timing on it, because that makes it a sure thing she’ll be gone in a week.  On his way out, Harvey finds a letter that Blair has written but never intended to send, one last love letter.  Indeed, Blair croaks four hours after Harvey left. 

As Cliff runs around buying votes for Perry, Harvey tells Richard he wants to retire.  “Was it something I did…or didn’t do?” Richard asks of his one true friend, the only person he really trusts.  As a parting gift, he gives Richard his sister’s letters that Richard thought were destroyed.  Harvey intends to travel the world and be back in time to vote for Perry. 

Uh oh.  The men in power have decided they want Woodrow Wilson to be President, with Perry as Vice President, still promising to make him President, but not until 1920.  The men have decided a war is necessary in the coming years and Wilson is the best man to handle it.  This is all rather a nasty plot twist to characters we have come to love, undermining the dream Richard has had for so many years, as good or bad as he may be. 

Uncle David gets a surprise when Richard shows up at his house.  His wife decides to tell him the truth about how Richard saved him all those years ago, so he agrees to see Richard.  This is the first time Richard has appeared timid and tentative, even afraid.  There is some power missing from the scene because David was never given a fully developed characterization.  Anyway, the reason he’s there is to ask his brother’s help in winning the election for his son, having to fight against the men in power.  This whole scene serves to redeem Richard’s character one last time.  No longer a member of the evil boy’s club, he wants to what he’s always wanted now based on merit.  Richard tells Perry the men have dropped him and Perry is thrilled, because he has wanted to smash them.  Unfortunately, Robert Vaughn has been listening to the whole conversation on a phone extension, so things are going to end badly.

Okay, with only moments to go in the movie, we get a plot twist we did not expect and one that is, frankly, damn annoying.  The Titanic sinks with Harvey on it.  Come on, is that REALLY necessary?  Fine, I understand that Harvey needs to pay for his sins just as much as anyone, but on the Titanic?  That’s historical fiction at its dumbest. 

I hate to bring this up, folks, but with Perry running as an idealist, suddenly on the opposite side of the men in power, he has to die.  A story like this demands it.  During a campaign stop, he is shot and dies, but at least in Jane’s arms.  Where else is Richard to turn but to Patty, calling herself “confused,” but completely bonkers.  She’s been paying for her sins for way too long.  Richard is just starting.  He even invites Jane to mourn with him at the funeral.  She tells Richard how much Perry loved him and he starts to cry, not having really understood it all these years.  The funeral is an odd assortment: Richard, his nun sister, both of Perry’s wives and even Robert Vaughn, who had him killed. 

Humbled and broken (we assume that Cliff dies in an airplane accident), Richard sits in a chair in his great mansion, having lost everyone and everything that should have mattered to him as he spend his life racing for power and money. 

If the last episode of the miniseries is a bit too sentimental, a completely change of tone from the rest, it’s to be expected.  People do have to pay for the things they want most, and in this case, it’s not payment in money, but in lives.  That’s a lofty idea, one we might not have expected television to tackle in the 1970s.  But here it is and it’s splendid.