Mrs. Delafield Wants To
Marry (Telefilm)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: D Telefilm: C
After the controversy over Lucille Ball in Stone Pillow
(reviewed elsewhere on this site), director George Schaeffer took on family
insecurity and anti-Semitism in Mrs. Delafield Wants To Marry (1986),
marking one of the late Katherine Hepburn’s few excursions into the television
medium. She is a wealthy woman, a widow
despite keeping the “Mrs.” out of respect.
When she meets a Jewish doctor named Marvin (Harold Gould), they fall in
love, though both families feel far from warm and fuzzy about it all.
Back when this aired, Judaism was still being ignored and
kept under wraps. To be Jewish
explicitly on TV and in society was still being met with amazing ugliness and
ignorance. What might have been
intriguing at the time has worn thin and not dated well at all. Even with an additional cast that includes
Denholm Elliott, Bibi Besch and David Ogden Stiers among the name persons in a
convincing cast, the telefilm is just tired and drags on and on. It is worth a look once for the
performances, but in the wasteland that TV has become since the 1980s, some of
the changes are for the better and Jewishness being permanently front and
center is one great change for the better.
The 1.33 X 1 image is fuzzy and dated, though it looks
like it was shot on film, while the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is louder and
clearer than usual, almost harsh at a few points. There are no extras, but it was an ambitious telefilm at the time
before TV movies became so bad.
- Nicholas Sheffo
