Una vez no basta

Jacqueline Susann's glamorous, emotional, highly personal novels always lost something in their translation to the screen. Once Is Not Enough is another prime example. But it doesn't have the unintended hilarity of Valley of the Dolls, nor the compelling sleaziness of The Love Machine. The most outrageous and memorable elements of the book are excised completely, and the result is two hours of sudsy romantic nothingness. Without the pills, vitamin shots, wild sex (including an acid-fueled orgy), and disturbing violence that infused the compelling novel, the story is as flat as week-old ginger ale.

It's a slick production with an all-star cast, including the engaging Deborah Raffin as January, but the material is awful. The filmmakers' were obviously trying for a "respectable" approach, and the results are just plain boring. Case in point: Jackie provided the book with a surreal, escapist conclusion that's wholly amazing, whereas the movie just...ends. The book was about a naive girl trying to deal with life, and the movie is about--say it with me now!--LOOOOOOOVE! And it's like every other mediocre movie on the subject.

However, things are brightened by Brenda Vaccaro in her Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated turn as uninhibited magazine editor Linda Riggs. She's the perfect realization of Susann's character (albeit with toned-down material) and provides a lot more spirit than this tepid production deserves. Her performance alone merits a viewing, but everything else is a daytime-TV-style mess. About as shocking as a trip to the supermarket--perhaps even less so.

I haven't seen this in a while, and miss this rarely seen pic, which deserves a cult following. Deborah Raffin is outstanding as a gorgeous young girl with strange feelings for her Dad. She gets involved with an unhappy alcoholic writer, played by David Janssen. Brenda Vaccaro is outstanding as her beautiful but embittered friend who is desperate for a man. And Melinda Mercouri is memorable as a lovely lesbian. They knew they were making a piece of trash here, and it is well worth your time. Good job. I esp. like those corny singers at the end of the film which seem to have stepped out of a 1960s movie!Deborah is good and she is fortunate to have such a great ensemble cast to support her. Enjoy!

The big-screen "Valley of the Dolls" and under-appreciated "Love Machine" are both camp film classics in their different ways. But this adaptation of Susann's last novel has a reputation as an embarrassment without being quite bad or enjoyable enough to reward that historical semi-misjudgment. English-born director director Guy Green (perhaps best known for 1965 Sidney Poitier vehicle "A Patch of Blue" and the disastrous 1968 adaptation of John Fowles' "The Magus") does a thoroughly respectable job with his very trashy source material--which is to say he mostly sucks the life out of it via soft-focus and an over-delicate approach to performers who might easily have gone into ham overdrive. They include Kirk Douglas as a Hollywood mogul, Alexis Smith as his ex-wife and Melina Mercouri as her lover; plus Gary Conway, George Hamilton and David Janssen as suitors to our heroine, Douglas' daughter Deborah Raffin.

The latter was a classic 70s shampoo commercial (Clairol!) blonde beauty a la Cybill Shepherd almost boosted to stardom in films that fell short. She's more emotionally naturalistic than this movie's often ludicrous soap-opera situations deserve. But at the same time, a more histrionic lead performance and more shamelessly melodramatic directorial hand might have made "Once Is Not Enough" an enduring guilty pleasure rather than just a dated bad movie. Watching it again just now did make me wonder about Raffin, however, who's apparently remained active as a TV/film actress with a modest profile (according to IMDb). She was only 21 when she made this movie, but she holds her own alongside some historied stars.

The best thing about "Once Is Not Enough," however, is Brenda Vaccaro. Following a long line of wisecracking second leads from Pert Kelton to Eve Arden to Dyan Cannon and beyond, she gets an unexpectedly ideal showcase in a seriocomic support role in a disposable movie. She's terrific. Her enjoyment in the role does a lot to dignify a stupid film--one otherwise marked mostly by the efforts of talented people to ignore how trashy their source material is.

Wackadoo slice of late Susann--the most swanky I-love-daddy fantasy ever committed to celluloid. Little princess Deborah Raffin can't get over those warm, tingly feelings she has for Daddy (Kirk Douglas), a worn-out Hollywood producer reduced to marrying a lesbian billionaire (Alexis Smith) to keep Princess in cashmere. When she feels her special place has been taken by the sapphic capitalist, she shifts to a handy incest-surrogate--a soused genius novelist (David Janssen) who seems to be modeled after Norman Mailer. In a stroke of sublime Susann fantasy, Mailer-Janssen is impotent--cured by the nubile caresses of Princess. Throw in Brenda Vaccaro as a man-eating fashion editor and you have a mound of trash with as much fragrance as a New York sanitation strike.

The saddest credits on this number: "Producer--Howard Koch. Assistant Director--Howard Koch, Jr." Imagine the agony of poor Guy Green, an aging British yeoman who had just finished work on a biography of Martin Luther, as he struggled with the correct way to shoot a sex scene between Alexis Smith and Melina Mercouri. It's all not quite as peacocklike as it sounds, but Susann certainly had a pop style--the raspy voice of an old Broadway bawd telling an ingenue (i.e., her hausfrau-ly reader), how it really is in the big, ugly, grown-up world. The freaky, non-contradictory mix of camp, obsession and melodrama a la fromage has a sweetness a half century later: the biggest-selling woman author of all time really did just want to be a pampered shiksa teenager stroking some graying temples.

Ick. I missed this movie when it came out because my summer of 1975 was filled with the excitement of the Boston Red Sox and I paid attention to little else. Now that I've seen it, all I can say is, "Ick." January's unnatural adoration of her father left me feeling queasy. Well, it's probably not unnatural for a young girl to idolize her father. But it seems that her father encouraged it past the little girl stage right into adulthood. She keeps a picture of her father by her bedside and another on her desk. At one point, Tom says to her, "I think you're beautiful." Her answer is, "Thank you. I think you are too. Almost as beautiful as my father."

Mike Wayne (actor Kirk Douglas) is an overindulgent father. His character could have been complicated and interesting. Not here. Kirk Douglas's performance on screen is cringe-worthy. Deborah Raffin as his daughter January was boring. I don't know what's worse, icky or blah.

This was a bad movie until about an hour in when the character Tom Colt shows up. David Janssen is so good as Tom Colt that it's like he's acting in a different movie. He elevates this awful movie. I also enjoyed Brenda Vaccaro as Linda Riggs, January's best friend. She must have had a ball with that character – she plays it so enthusiastically and with such confidence. In comparison, Deborah Raffin as January Wayne was practically lifeless. It's just a bland, unintelligent performance, and she's the center of the movie, so she needed to be more interesting. She also had some awful lines and Raffin wasn't talented enough to make more of those lines. And she showed no emotion in her reactions to events. I neither liked nor disliked her. I felt nothing for her. So I couldn't feel sorry for her at the end.

Tom Colt turns out to be the most interesting character. He's earthy and macho. David Janssen gives this movie depth and the beautiful and funny Brenda Vaccaro gives it lightness. Both characters know who they are and are honest. And I cared about them. Everyone else either sleepwalks through this slow-moving movie or weighs it down with melodrama.

It's sad that 30 years after Casablanca (1942), the screenwriter of that classic film was asked to work on this. I don't think he was the right man for the job.