DON'T JUST STAND THERE

Mary Tyler Moore and Robert Wagner just read the script

DON'T JUST STAND THERE (1968). Director: Ron Winston. 

Martine Randall (Mary Tyler Moore of Just Between Friends) works for romance novelist Sabine Manning (Glynis Johns of The Cabinet of Caligari), who has run off to who-knows-where. Kendall Flannigan (Barbara Rhoades) is hired to finish Manning's latest opus, but after she is accused of killing her boyfriend she is kidnapped by his gangster friends. Martine hires Lawrence Colby (Robert Wagner of Say One for Me) to finish the book, and he winds up affecting a rescue of Kendall. And it gets more confusing and stupider after that. 

Wagner and Moore went in disguise after pic's release

I'm afraid that Don't Just Stand There is one of those alleged comedies that is simply busy and frenetic instead of funny. I believe I laughed exactly once during the entire hour and forty minutes. Moore and Johns must have been appalled at the results if and when they saw this incredibly bad movie disaster. Both, especially Moore, are capable of being funny, but the script defeats them. Even Harvey Korman in a supporting role doesn't garner a single laugh. This is the first film for Barbara Rhoades and she's lucky it wasn't her last. Glynis Johns at least isn't on screen for that long. Charles Williams, who wrote the book (The Wrong Venus) this was based on also wrote the screenplay, so he has to get much of the blame. Possibly this was never meant to be a comedy? 

Verdict: Atrocious film is an effort to sit through despite some good players. *. 

EUNICE

Carol Burnett as Eunice

EUNICE (1982 telefilm/TV special).

"I told you if you married Ed Higgins you'd get freaks for kids, and that's just what you got." -- Mama referring to Eunice's boys.

The highlights of The Carol Burnett Show were "The Family" sketches which focused on the highly-dysfunctional Harper family, especially on the love-hate relationship between Eunice (Carol Burnett) and her mother (Vicki Lawrence). This 1982 special was the longest Family "sketch" of all, taped before a live audience, and consisting of four parts in different time periods: 1955, when Eunice is courted by future husband Ed (Harvey Korman), and brother Phil (Ken Berry) leaves for New York to become a writer; 1963, in which Phil has achieved some success and Eunice wants to go to New York with him to become an actress; 1973, in which Phil wins a Pulitzer but still has to deal with the jealousies, resentments and pressures of his weird family back home; and 1978, when Mama dies and old squabbles resurface between Eunice and her sister Ellen (Betty White of Advise and Consent), but the former finally plans to make her escape from her dismal small-town existence -- but will she? Sharply written by Jenna McMahon and Dick Clair, in its own comic [often only slightly exaggerated] way Eunice unveils the way in which family members can lacerate one another due to their own insecurities and frustrations; played differently it could have been a drama. While Burnett and her Eunice border on caricature, the comedienne manages the difficult feat of making the shrill, unlikable Eunice sympathetic, while Lawrence -- who received an Emmy nomination -- is just splendid as the grumpy if coldly realistic Mama, who has no patience with her daughter's fantastic plans and dreams. Korman, Berry, and White also score in their important supporting roles. This excellent (and highly-rated) telefilm unfortunately led into the sitcom Mama's Family, in which Burnett did not participate (but for a couple of guest appearances), stripping the whole project of its most important and funniest relationship.

Verdict: Funny and rather horrifying in equal measure. ***1/2.

THE LUCY SHOW Season 3

Ball and Vance with bird

THE LUCY SHOW Season 3. 1964. CBS.

"Her hair's dyed -- and her brain isn't too long for this world, either."

After I Love Lucy wrapped up and Lucy divorced Desi -- the two remained involved with Desilu Studios -- Ball importuned Vivian Vance, who only wanted to stay on the east coast with her husband, to co-star with her in a new vehicle. Supposedly based on a book called "Life Without George," The Lucy Show basically had Lucy (now the widowed Lucy Carmichael with two children) and Ethel (reborn as the divorced Vivian Bagley with one son) sharing a house and expenses and a lot of misadventures. The network kept wooing Lucy and Lucy kept wooing Vance, so she returned for a third season of silly episodes. Vance did not appear in every episode -- one condition for her doing the show -- so she was occasionally replaced by special guest-stars, including Ann Sothern, who isn't bad as a widowed countess who returns to the town where she was born. However, the episodes with Ball and Vance are generally the most memorable. Arguably the best third season episode has Lucy and Viv vying for Charles Drake as Lucy shows up at a dance on roller skates, ensuring pandemonium. Other reasonably good shows have Jack Benny playing a plumber, Lucy and Viv acting as camp cooks, and a wacky trip to Las Vegas. Lucy loses a contact lens in chocolate icing but doesn't know which cake, and she accidentally sucks a rare valuable stamp into a vacuum cleaner she's trying to sell. And so on.

Lucy and Viv can still be very funny,-- and occasionally overbearing, especially the former --  but the scripts weren't always up to their standards. Gale Gordon makes an excellent foil as irritable banker Mr. Mooney; he's especially good in a sequence wherein he tries to teach Lucy how to ski. The episode where Lucy tries to get tickets to a Danny Kaye performance is fairly wretched, as are the episodes where she becomes a traffic and undercover cop. Guest-stars and supporting players include a very funny Harvey Korman, Reta Shaw, Byron Foulger, Keith Andes, John Williams, Kathleen Freeman, Jim Davis, Carole Cook, Nestor Paiva, Mabel Albertson, Jack Kelly, Steven Geray and Norma Varden. The children haven't got much to do but they are appealing and do it well.

Verdict: No I Love Lucy, but a certain amount of laughs and clever comic antics. **1/2.