Stone Pillow (1985 Telefilm/Lucille Ball)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Telefilm: B-
In her last feature-length work of any kind, Lucille Ball
took on one of her most challenging and sad roles as the homeless veteran
Florabelle in veteran George Schaefer’s Stone Pillow, a 1985 TV movie
that wanted to be socially conscious and had mixed results. Critics ripped it apart beyond what was
necessary, not being able to deal with Lucy in anything after the cancellation
of Here’s Lucy by the early 1970s.
Twenty years later, the telefilm holds up better than expected.
Though she was very unhappy with how All In The Family
changed the medium for the better, here she finally was in a role that was made
partly possible by Norman Lear’s classic.
While Florabelle pushes her old metal shopping cart all over the place
barely surviving, she is spotted by a young social worker Carrie Lang (Daphne
Zuniga) who is trying to find out more about being homeless. She decides to lie to Florabelle and pretend
to be newly homeless. So begins a mixed
relationship.
Zuniga was especially targeted for giving a bad
performance, having no chemistry with Ball and being shrill. The sad part is that the teleplay by Rose
Leiman Goldemberg was surprisingly misogynistic towards the role when the men
she works for gives her the “you dumb bitch” speeches for pretending to be
homeless. It is as offensive as it is
condescending. Though the homelessness
may not be as starkly realistic as later documentaries on the subject (see Dark
Days elsewhere eon this site), it was bold and shocking for its time to
speak of these horrors and critics should have embraced that part of the film
instead of having a field day playing their stupid game of “Bashing Lucy”.
Zuniga went on to become the kind of actress doing the
same shallow mannequin/fembot roles that rolled back the image of women in film
and TV, far form the legacy that was Lucy’s.
A young Steven Lang also turns up.
The film tackles a subject most telefilms and feature films could care
less about and does a decent, noble job when skipping its pontifications. Lucy deserves more credit than she got and
for degrading her solid gold and red-headed image, is something you would not
see most women with her money and power in the business dare do today. That what separates real actresses from mere
stars.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image was shot on film by
cinematographer Walter Lassally, a long time feature film cameraman who did a
TV work towards the end of his career.
The work is more than competent and better than many feature films we
have seen of late. Unfortunately, this
is an old analog video transfer that sometimes goes almost totally dark when it
should not and has detail and color issues.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows that the sound is also a few
generations down. There are no extras
either, but if you have not seen this film, you should. It was made towards the end of a run of TV
movies when they were still good. Stone
Pillow was at least ambitious, succeeding a bit more than many thought.
- Nicholas Sheffo
