Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway

Eve Plumb in an effort to get away from her image of Jan Brady, middle sister with Marcia issues, on the Brady Bunch took a part as far as you can get from the G-rated Brady family. She plays Dawn Wetherby who ran away from home because of problems simply never contemplated in the Brady household.

Getting to the mean streets of Los Angeles she makes three acquaintances who change her life, fellow teen runaway Leigh J. McCloskey, social worker Georg Stanford Brown and bottom feeding pimp Bo Hopkins. In this made for TV movie, a big ratings winner back in the day it all works out pretty much as it's supposed to.

Not that this a great film, it's just average, but people tuned into this one to see Jan Brady in a hooker outfit more than anything else. This was not the end of the saga of Leigh and Eve. A sequel was made next year with McCloskey the protagonist showing him earning a living on the streets any which way he could.

Where was Marcia when you needed her?

I saw this when it first aired as a tv movie, and have also seen it on tape. This is a much better the average TV movie. Parts are very compelling as you watch this young runaway evolve into a streetwalker. I was shocked to find out that the actress that played Dawn also played Jan Brady. This role is a great departure for her, and she plays it very well. She can act, and she has sex-appeal. The ending is pure TV movie soap, but the middle and beginning are an intense drama. It is quality television that holds up well over time. This far better then the sequel which was more of soap.

Although a bit tame by today's standards, "Dawn" was quite the thing when it came out. In my opinion, the most memorable character is not Dawn, herself, but her hustler friend Alexander, played by Leigh J. McCloskey, whose performance was so deeply moving that he scored a sequel of his own: "Alexander: the Other Side of Dawn" (1977) (TV). Unfortunately, the sequel wasn't up to the original when it came to presenting Alexander. This was a landmark movie to many of its audience members, some of whom I know can STILL remember its EXACT title, a quarter century later; such was its impact on the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate generation.

I was a senior in high school when this played on TV and it was not only a big hit, but a big shocker. Plus the fact that one of the Brady Bunch girls played a run away who becomes a street walker added to the shock. Today, this made for tv film would be nothing to really write home about. Most of the acting was just average and Bo Hopkins as Swan the pimp basically overplayed his role, which was also very stereotyped. The content matter was raunchy for 1976. Not only female prostitution was addressed, but also male prostitution. Of course this was made a few years before the Aids epidemic, so it sort of lessens the impact. For it's time, pretty good.

Eve Plumb gives a soft but rather touching performance as a naive teen from the sticks who ends up working the Hollywood Boulevard. I loved it when Dawn and her troubled roommate Alexander finally get electricity to their dump ("Bottled sunlight", Dawn says), and the brief scenes where Alexander is tempted by his gift-giving gay customers are handled with surprising resonance and taste. It's not an especially campy movie, despite the glitter rock songs (The Runaways screaming "Cherry Bomb!") and the presence of a Brady Buncher playing a prostitute. Rather, the film has good location work, interesting characters and editing. It would be easy to tag the film as TV-styled exploitation, yet it has its heart in the right place. In its day, this was a bigger ratings winner than Linda Blair's "Sarah T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic" which started fresh a timeworn cycle: the teens-in-trouble genre.