Smile Jenny, You're Dead

David Jansen was a tremendous.talent,gone way to early!every series he was on was great to watch!

Harry Orwell (David Janssen) finds Liberty Cole (Jodie Foster) hanging out on his boat. He's a former cop who lives in a beach house. His police friend's son-in-law gets murdered. It leads to the modeling daughter Jennifer English (Andrea Marcovicci) who has a crazed stalker.

This is two years before Taxi Driver. Jodie gets to be a bratty pre-teen. I wish her story would be the A story. She is the most compelling actress in the cast despite some very good veteran actors. This is the second pilot TV movie before the series. The A story has Marcovicci playing a big time model, but I don't buy it. I don't mind her. Heck! She's Chalmers in Spacehunter. She's just not a supermodel and the story doesn't require it. Any pretty girl can be stalked. This is a fine episode that gets stretched out a little.

As a beach-front living private investigator with a bullet still lodged in his back, David Janssen made a terrific, hard-bitten crime-fighter of the Old School (not quite Bogie, maybe a latter-day Dana Andrews). This pilot for his very successful TV series "Harry O" is mostly memorable though for young Jodie Foster, playing a pre-teen street urchin waiting for her shoplifting mother to get out of jail (the movie opens with a beautiful shot of Foster asleep on Janssen's boat, The Answer). Foster has all the best lines in the movie, and she reads them straight--without a hint of precociousness. As a murder-mystery, the film lags a bit and as a film it certainly doesn't benefit from future-director Zalman King's unpleasant presence (he's like a second-rate Marjoe Gortner). But for Foster-philes it's a goldmine, and students of cinematography should study that amazing first shot. 'The Answer' indeed!

Man, do I miss "Harry O". I used to love seeing this detective series with David Janssen's gravelly charm as a cynical PI who has to take public transit to solve mysteries! It is completely antithetical to the "Magnum PI" slick cars, slick everything that now permeates the standard TV detective format. This is partially why I love the 1970's era of cop shows. They portrayed the heroes as overworked, underpaid, world-weary, blue-collar joes who are always swimming upstream. There are no super heroics here. In fact, the Harry Orwell character pushed the detective archetype back a rung or two. He shows us that being a PI isn't so bloody marvelous.

It's been a long time since "Harry O" disappeared even from filling in a time slot on the late late show, and almost as long since this TV movie (the second pilot to the series, if you will) used to fill programming on lazy Saturday afternoons on my local bands.

This time Harry O is after an obsessive nut job photographer played by Zalman King. Since BLUE SUNSHINE is one of my favourite cult movies, I have a soft spot for this interesting actor, even though he isn't the greatest thespian the world has known. Before he went behind the camera to produce the soft core fantasies of TWO MOON JUNCTION or the "Red Shoes Diaries" series, he nonetheless had his share of weird roles. Case in point, this psycho goes around with this huge bow-tie- he more resembles Bozo the clown than a stalker, but King's "edgy" acting gives the character the danger beneath the sheep's clothing.

This TV-movie also features an early performance by Jodie Foster in her "tomboy" stage (think ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE) as an urchin who sets up home on Harry O's beach property.

In all, SMILE JENNY YOU'RE DEAD is a satisfying thriller with an unusual climax. It is another nice memory of TV-films of the day. Video, please?

Writer Howard Rodman was asked by Warner Brothers to create a TV version of Dirty Harry Callahan, and Harry Orwell is what he came up with! Rodman based Harry on a bit character in Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust". The West character was a tired middle-aged salesman walking up a city hill on a hot afternoon with his jacket thrown over his shoulder and his sleeves rolled up. Harry O was written with Telly Savalas in mind, but Savalas became the peerless Theo Kojak instead.

David Janssen reinvented himself as Harry Orwell, giving a superb performance unlike any he had given before. The forty-two year old Janssen's Orwell was completely different from the brash lady-killer private detective Richard Diamond he had played at 26. Janssen's Harry Orwell was as different from his Richard Diamond as Bogart's Philip Marlowe was from his Sam Spade. And Janssen had completely left behind his great signature role of Dr. Richard Kimble.

Howard Rodman created a fine character, and Janssen played him to perfection (and made you forget it was created with the great Savalas in mind). This was far different from "O'Hara, U.S. Treasury" (which he had done two years earlier) where Jack Webb apparently asked Janssen to play some version of himself to stultifying effect. (Howard Rodman had co-written two episodes of "Naked City" that Janssen had guest starred on in the early 60's.)

The best visual images in the series were Janssen riding on a bus at night (shades of "The Fugitive") and Janssen running on the beach in his bathing suit with his halting, distinctive gait. Janssen created a very appealing classic private eye hero using his great voice for the narration, a unique shambling walk and a brilliantly chosen shabby wardrobe.

This second pilot for "Harry O" started the show promisingly. Producer/director Jerry Thorpe ("Kung Fu") did a beautiful job with this movie, hiring a very cool supporting cast including Martin Gabel, Tim McIntire, Zalman King, John Anderson, Clu Gulager, Ellen Weston and Howard Da Silva. But the best casting was of the two women who played opposite Janssen: lovely Andrea Marcovicci in the main plot and young Jodie Foster in the subplot. Both actresses were perfect, and their relationships with Janssen gave this movie an emotional weight that the resulting series didn't have. The scenes between Janssen and Marcovicci and Janssen and Foster were golden.

The resulting series was good, but not as great as it should have been. The show started the same year as "The Rockford Files". "Harry O" had a much stronger central character, but the series wasn't as shrewdly done as "Rockford". Harry O should have been set in Los Angeles from the beginning, not in San Diego. The Hollywood connection should have been played up. Harry's "friends on the force" detracted from the show, even though they were good actors. Maybe his friend on the force should have been a woman (Salome Jens). The series needed better recurring characters for Harry to play off of like Roy Huggins/Stephen Cannell gave Rockford. Perhaps Harry should have had two or three ex-wives (Colleen Dewhurst, Diana Muldaur, Julie Sommars) and maybe a cop father (Kent Taylor) and a former show girl/actress mother (Larraine Day or Gypsy Rose Lee). The character of Les, who hero-worshiped Harry, was very good and should have been used more. And they should have found excuses to bring back Marcovicci and Foster. Maybe Marcovicci's character became a lounge singer who the infatuated Orwell stayed in touch with. Maybe Harry should have adopted Jodie.

It was apparent that a lot of effort and talent went into this series. But they weren't quite able to find stories to tell that were as compelling as their superb hero.