''Tales From the Hollywood Hills'' is an umbrella title for a series of short-story adaptations, the first season counts three titles. The premiere entry, adapted by Andy Wolk and directed by Paul Bogart, is John O'Hara's ''Natica Jackson.'' The second one is Budd Schulberg's ''Table at Ciro's'' and the following part, F. Scott Fitzgerald's ''Pat Hobby Teamed With Genius.''
The show was aired on November 6, 1987 at PBS. With David Loxton as executive producer and Kimberly Myers as series producer, the project deserved warm encouragement. For one thing, it tapped a rich literary source in this country, the possibilities for which were clearly perceived several years back on public television's acclaimed ''American Short Story'' showcase. In addition, the logistics for ''Tales'' indicated a further expansion of co-production deals that might provide public television with badly needed original programming of quality. ''Tales'' was put together for production in the United States by WNET in New York and Zenith Productions in London in association with station KCET in Los Angeles.
Taped in and around Hollywood studios and mansions, ''Tales'' is focused on Tinseltown's supposedly golden days of the 1930's. All of the writers had first-hand experience with the Art Deco scene. Mr. Schulberg's father, B. P. Schulberg, was a pioneer producer. Fitzgerald's losing battle with the studios is now legendary. O'Hara's ties with the notorious film colony were more tenuous, limited to a couple of forgettable movies, but ''Natica Jackson'' demonstrates that the experiences left their mark.
Michelle Pfeiffer's Natica
With her looks, Michelle Pfeiffer was perfect for the role, but she took it far beyond beauty; she inhabited Natica Jackson to eerie perfection. "Michelle was the first person we thought of," says director Paul Bogart, "She identified very strongly with Natica, who could be bartered and exchanged like a piece of merchandise. Michelle felt she understood what it was like to be a kind of commodity." (Premiere - September 1988)
The filming set coincided with the fell apart after seven years of her marriage to actor Peter —thirtysomething— Horton. "Usually when things are tough I dive right into my work and I use it as a drug," she said, but this time the drug didn't work at all. She felt unconcentrated, and had a hard time playing an intimate sex scene with costar Brian Kerwin. "I was hysterical."
But reviewers loved her peformance. According John J O'Connor in the New York Times (November 6, 1987):
"This is vintage O'Hara, deceptively simple and dotted with hard-boiled sentimentality. Played superbly by Michelle Pfeiffer in a glamorous haze of blond hair and brittle vulnerability.
As directed by Mr. Bogart, ''Natica Jackson'' captures the almost dreamlike unreality of the Hollywood factories while revealing the very ordinary people wandering through them. Meanwhile, very nearly offstage, there is kept in reserve a plot twist that will turn the fragile little story into a tragedy. The result is a beautifully conceived and executed television production, its running time of just under an hour being just about perfect.
The cast in general is fine, but Ms. Pfeiffer is absolutely wonderful. She is every Jean Harlow type who ever became ensnared in the Hollywood machine. She can be a bit dizzy and frazzled at times but underneath there is a formidable shrewdness. And she makes the most of the O'Hara perceptions. When her chemist wonders if Natica ever gets lonely in her big mansion all by herself, she replies, ''Maybe, but I never got so lonely that I wanted to marry the kind of guy who wanted to marry me.'' The tone is right on the mark, a crucial criterion for any adaptation of a short story."
Also, Richard Zoglin from Time (November 16, 1987) said: "In Natica Jackson, Michelle Pfeiffer plays a pampered screen beauty who falls for a married man. John O'Hara's tale has a bitter twist, and Pfeiffer adds her own tasty mix of sweetness and vinegar"
And James Kplan from Entertainment Weekly (January 29, 1993) wrote "One of Pfeiffer's very best roles was as a goddess. (...) Michelle Pfeiffer made you believe that, had she been around then, she could have shown Garbo and Lombard a thing or two."
DVD/Video Version
Such as we have read above, the original version "Natica Jackson" was part of the series "Tales from the Hollywood Hills" which runs 56 minutes.
But the home video/dvd edition called "Power, Passion and Murders" combines two episodes of the series, alongside the second episode is "A Table at Ciro's". The problem is, that they inter-cut both stories instead to show just one after the other, which is pretty confusing. |
