Me, Natalie

I remember going into Center City Philadelphia with a friend and walking along Chestnut Street right past a line of hippies waiting to get into Easy Rider. Of course, we went to see Patty Duke as we were fans of her TV show. I enjoyed the That Girl mixed with pathos. Yes, it was a tad preachy but the golden girl attracting trouble, a little schadenfreude on Patty's part? But, all too soon, Patty became involved with the wrong man, too. There was a lot of good in the movie for us young girls to see. Natalie graduating from school, getting a job and her own place complete with the bed cut of a bathtub seemed preferable to doing the deed in a New Orleans graveyard as in Easy Rider.

This is by far one of my favorite films ever. I haven't seen it since I was 9 or 10 about 12 years ago. I absolutely love Patty Duke's performance, and the film is so balanced and witty. It definitely inspired me to be a filmmaker and I would love to see it again.

I finally managed to secure a 16mm transfer of ME, NATALIE on NTSC VHS cassette after searching for this film for nearly nine years. I originally found it on Japanese laserdisc in a video store in Manhattan in 1994 but the price was $75.00 and I was hardly about to spend that kind of money!

Al Pacino has a less-than 60-second role in this 1969 "people will love you for the person you are inside" drama starring Patty Duke and Martin Balsam. I always liked Balsam, and he had me giggling after he discourses on the virtues of being homely, then announces his decision to marry a stripper! He's a true male chauvanist pig. LOL

Nancy Marchand is very good as Duke's mother, but the screenplay suffers from a preachy tone that gets to be a real turn-off by the end of the film. A running time of 90 minutes would have been plenty rather than the nearly 107 minutes that it does run.

I love movies shot in New York City, and this film does an ample job of capturing the aura of city life at that time.

Worth seeing for the performances, plus seeing Livia Soprano 30 years younger is a treat...

It's tough to make Patty Duke into an ugly duckling. Her fierce determination, wiseass manner, and throwaway good humor are attractive qualities--and they each serve to save her "homely" character from heartbreak. Natalie is a textbook plain Jane from Brooklyn who finally makes a break from her parents and moves to the Village; she gains strength in her independence, but her self-consciousness (and keenly-honed sense of dramatics) cause her to hit a comedic bump or two. Martin Balsam has a wonderful and sensitive supporting role as an adoring uncle, and James Farentino is very fine playing an artist with whom Natalie falls in love. Their relationship is surprisingly free of the usual clichés, making this a sweet, warm, funny movie that has stood the test of time. *** from ****

The good news: Patty Duke redeems herself as an actress after her admittedly "bad work" in "Valley of the Dolls." The bad news: hardly anyone went to see this in theaters. That's a shame because there's much to commend this film. Most of that centers around Duke's performance (actually, they're all top notch performances here). She has to convince us she's unattractive, vulnerable, yet no weakling by any stretch of the imagination. Yet I never felt entirely sorry for her because she seemed well equipped to weather the putdowns that come from being an ugly girl. I ended up liking Natalie because Duke makes her likable -- yeah, she's got a heart of gold but she's got spirit, too. There are all kinds of nice moments here but I especially appreciate the scene at the Hoboken ferry landing where she goes to see if her fictional Prince Charming will actually materialize. She won a Golden Globe award for this performance and it stands as probably her best work as an adult. From here she moved into what is arguably her second best adult role, in the TV film, "My Sweet Charlie." She won an emmy for that one. About this time she also did a wonderful job in a PBS film called "Birdbath." Again, she's paired with Farentino and again, she's a plain Jane from New York City, but this time with an entirely different psychological make-up from Natalie and with a horrible secret. Duke sure showed a lot of potential for the big screen...too bad it never materialized. And it's too bad this film isn't available on VHS.