The Dream Merchants

Cheese, cheese and more cheese. Mix Harold Robbins' pot-boiling plot (that unfolds in the early days of the Hollywood studio systems) with that "80s Dynasty-esque glamour" and you're left with some bad acting, bad dialogue, and some historical inaccuracies. However, you just gotta love hissing at the screen when bad girl Morgan Fairchild appears to chew up some scenery!

If you love bad miniseries from the 80s, here's one for you.

Message to the first of the other two reviewers:

Sony doesn't listen to ardent fans. It doesn't give one little flying f**k to our pitiful cries for the re-issuing of beloved film. It cares not one little damn. Neither does any of the other big names. Neither does the network executives. It's all about the quest for your dollar in the most mainstream way. They catch more fish when we're all in the same barrel.

No use hoping, we will never see our old favorites restored to the full glory that is DVD. Just the new stuff, for the bleating sheep out there, ooh Spiderman 2, ooh Iron Man 3, ooh screw that stupid sh** 4...

Look, they pulled the plug on THE SECRET CIRCLE and threw away the key. And if they could do that, what chance does THE DREAM MERCHANTS have?

I saw it years ago when it was still new. I just vaguely remember that Morgan Fairchild was in it. The only real scene I remember is that of a (director?) pleading: "If I don't see it down here, how is anybody gonna see it up there?"*, referring to an actress's indifference to the camera.

But we are well into the next century now, and even if my life depended on getting to see this one more time... (give a long, world-weary sigh, wipe away a tear, go make some coffee)

Hang on to your dear memories, my friend!

*perhaps not the exact words, but something to that effect.

This American mini-series (1980) in two parts based on a novel by best-selling author Harold Robbins that was published in 1949 was broadcast in January 1985 on the then West German television station ZDF.

It's about the beginning of the film industry at the beginning of the 20th century, when films were shown in so-called nickelodeons. In America, most films were initially shot in New York until the increasingly successful film entrepreneurs moved to sunny Hollywood and turned the orange plantations there into the most successful film metropolis in the world. A mixture of sex, business and intrigue depicts the early years of the film industry up to the transition to sound films at the end of the 1920s. The cast consists of a then-usual mix of attractive young stars who would become TV series stars in the 1980s, and deserving old stars who practically became film gods in the Hollywood heyday of the old studio system could become.

The leading roles are played by the attractive young stars Mark Harmon as the self-made man Johnny Edge and Morgan Fairchild as the charming, calculating actress Dulcie Warren. After this appearance, both would become the stars of the (unfortunately) short-lived prime time soap "Flamingo Road". Other roles include: Morgan Brittany (Dallas), Red Buttons (The Greatest Show on Earth), Howard Duff (Flamingo Road, Knots Landing), Jose Ferrer (Moulin Rouge), Fernando Lamas (father of Lorenzo Lamas), Ray Milland (Oscar for "The Lost Weekend") and Chao Li Chi (Falcon Crest).

Mediocre as a series of intrigue, not uninteresting as a chronicle of the beginning film industry!

I remember enjoying this on TV several times and look forward to having it on video. It's rarely even shown on TV anymore. Are you listening, Sony? If you don't want to release it, license it out to someone. it would make a nice DVD.

Lots of comfortably familiar faces like Kaye Ballard and Eve Arden (any Mothers-In-Law fans out there?) Morgan Fairchild and Morgan Brittany (who was in Gypsy as a kid on the same backlot) Vincent Gardenia, always likable Mark Harmon, and many more.

See the backlot and other parts of Warner Brothers (then "The Burbank Studios") which looks familiar from countless movies and TV shows... See the interior of the Hollywood Pantages as it looked in the 80s (the theatre Mel Ferrar is sitting in before his character bows out) See lots of familiar TV/movie/stage actors chewing up scenery. I don't know how faithful it is to the Harold Robbins novel, but it's good old fashioned Hollywood fun, and I recommend it as such.