Larry

This made for TV movie has two wonderful performances. The under- appreciated Frederick Forrest stars as Larry Herman, raised among autistics due to a childhood misdiagnosis. When he is moved from a youth home to an adult facility, a new therapist comes into play. Nancy Hockworth (Tyne Daly) shines as a caring, insightful professional, who is convinced that Larry is not merely high-functioning, he is completely normal.

Watch carefully for an amazing scene in which Daly succeeds in convincing an overworked M.D. that Larry is cognitively advanced. Your head will swim as Larry demonstrates a mastery of abstractions.

Try to remain dry-eyed as Daly's character gently guides Larry into an adult world he has missed for over 20 years.

Don't miss this gem if it is offered late night as a rerun.

I watched Larry as a kid when I was off ill from school, it ran several times in the afternoon on British television.

I found this to be a profound and moving experience even more so as it was based on true facts. It was my first glimpse of Frederic Forrest who gave a brilliant turn as Larry.

It is hard to think that in the 1970s you can get gritty, emotional and ambitious TV movies from US television when these days they tend to adapt the latest hit chick lit romance books.

Forrest stars as Larry Herman misdiagnosed as severely retarded from childhood and spent his life in mental institutions. However when he moves to a new facility. His new therapist played by Tyne Daly has suspicions that Larry might not be retarded but in fact be completely normal and tries to get the Doctors to reappraise him.

Over time with the help of his carers Larry tries to adjust to normal society after so long being institutionalised. By the end of the film Larry disappears wanting to have a new life of his own, his whereabouts since then have been unknown.

Given the TV film was made almost 40 years ago, he spent 26 years institutionalised and the true events would have taken place a several years earlier. I presume the real Larry Herman has died by now.

In the intervening years he has decided not to write a best selling story of his life or appear in shows such as Donohue or Oprah. I hope he lived to have a good and contented life.

Uplifting story of a man, who was abandoned by his mother to a mental institution, as a retard. He had assumed the speech patterns and mannerisms of the institutional retarded people that surrounded him. Only by heroic effort and luck did he communicate his intelligence to a professional who was paying attention and who cared. Thus begins his rehabilitation. Superb early performances by Tyne Daly and Fredric Forrest.

I was only about 10 years old when I saw this on TV. The character of Larry is very touching. It was probably the first time I was given some insight into a person behind a disability. Tyne Daly (of Cagney & Lacy fame) is great as a social worker who has her own challenges as she tries to teach Larry how to act like an adult. Frederic Forrest personifies Larry with an excellent performance. There are moments as an adult, he has difficulties accepting a world when he is developmentally still a child. As the audience, I felt great sympathy for his challenge to learn that as an adult, you have to make compromises. A key scene is where Larry must learn to live on a budget. He wants to buy some toys and needs to decide which toy he needs to give up. The cashier asks how old Larry's child is (that she thinks is getting the toys). Larry responds that the toys are for himself. Another scene is where Daly is trying to teach Larry how to eat like an adult. Larry refuses, and throws some food into Daly's face. You could see her use all her might (mentally) to control her reaction.

The insight Forrest shows us is that there is still a real thinking person inside a damaged body. They are still capable of functioning as an adult, and deserve the respect as any other individual. I am writing this review on the day Frederic Forrest died. He took advantage of having average looks to bring the everyman character to the screen, a rare quality. For me, being able to remember how touching this TV movie was, having only seen it once over 40 years ago, is a testament of how powerful of an actor Forrest was.

The fact that "Larry" is supposed to be based on the life of a real person makes this story tragic. Larry has lived his whole life in a wretched and substandard facility for the developmentally disabled. When the awfulness of the place is discovered, it's closed and Larry is transferred to a state hospital...where his social worker (Tyne Daly) comes to realize he might not, in fact, be mentally challenged. He sure acts like he is...but she comes to realize that growing up among these sorts of folks, he naturally learned to fit in with them. But first she has to convince the doctor in charge that Larry is different and in need of special therapy. Much of the film shows her and Larry working together to bring him up to normal functioning level.

The film is extraordinary and very well made. Frederic Forrest in the title role is excellent and the film is quite bittersweet...sad because of all the lost time yet filled with hope for the future. It's also handled very sensitively, though times have changed and many of the terms used today are no longer acceptable to many, such as 'mental retardation'. Bear with it...that IS how they talked back in the day. Well worth seeing.