Aired on CBS over two consecutive nights in October 1981, this updated version of the best-selling 1966 novel by Jacqueline Susann showed the lives of three very different women who arrive in Hollywood (the location shifted west from Broadway for the updated version), chasing fame and fortune in show business and get all messed up in the process.
Ann Welles (Catherine Hicks) is a brilliant lawyer who loves movies and impresses her corporate boss (James Coburn) so much that he turns her into one of those baby moguls. She is smart, committed, and virtuous – but vulnerable.
Jennifer North (Veronica Hamel, lacking the magic of Sharon Tate in the original cult classic 1967 film version) is a rising star who gets squeezed between a love affair and the jealous enmity of older star Helen Lawson (Jean Simmons, who gives it the old college try but is undone by the tweaks to her character).
Result: a trip into degradation. Drugs. Booze. Abortion. Lesbianism. She has a rough time. So do the viewers.
Neely O’Hara (Lisa Hartman) is a young singer who becomes too hot too fast and can’t keep up pedalling in the fast lane. She hits the pills, is bounced around by fame and love and suffers her way to the top.
Hartman is the least accomplished of the stars. She can wear tight pants with the best of them, but that doesn’t help her rise above this material.
David Birney does nothing at all as a womanising director, and Bert Convy is Bert Convy – somewhat typecast here as an overrated singer becoming overrun by brain deterioration.
Compared to the original film, this made-for-TV rehash is little more than another ’80s prime-time soap opera and the complexity of Susann’s characters and subtlety of their relationships are entirely lost in this syrupy TV movie.
Ann Welles
Catherine Hicks Neely O’Hara
Lisa Hartman Jennifer North
Veronica Hamel Lyon Burke
David Birney Kevin Gilmore
Gary Collins Tony Polar
Bert Convy Françoise
Britt Ekland Connie
Denise Nicholas Hill Teddi Casablanca
Steve Inwood Miriam
Carol Lawrence Vivienne
Camilla Sparv Helen Lawson
Jean Simmons Henry Bellamy
James Coburn Dr Galens
Kathleen Nolan Enid Marshall
Tricia O’Neil
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Jennifer North (Veronica Hamel, lacking the magic of Sharon Tate in the original cult classic 1967 film version) is a rising star who gets squeezed between a love affair and the jealous enmity of older star Helen Lawson (Jean Simmons, who gives it the old college try but is undone by the tweaks to her character).
