Les dessous d'Hollywood

Every once in a while when you sit down in front of the TV to be entertained, you don't want to have to think or analyze or correlate anything that you're watching. Sometimes you just want to put your brain on hold and watch pretty people in pretty costumes having pretty problems. If you like to indulge in mindless potboilers every now and then have your fill with the 1985 miniseries Hollywood WIVES, the trashy multi-episodic miniseries based on the equally trashy Jackie Collins novel. The story follows a select circle of Hollywood friends, acquaintances, newcomers, secretholders, adulterers and their various escapades. Now, let's see if I can remember all of this...Steve Forrest is an actor looking for a comeback and neglecting wife Candice Bergen while having an affair with Mary Crosby...producer/director Anthony Hopkins is cheating on screenwriter wife Stefanie Powers with blackmailing bimbo Suzanne Somers...Andrew Stevens and wife Catherine Mary Stewart move to Hollywood so that he can begin a career as an actor but she's the one who ends up having a career, being drafted by the studio head (Rod Steiger) who wants her for the lead in a film that Hopkins promised to Somers. When Stevens' career goes nowhere, he gets hired by Roddy McDowell to be a male escort to make ends meet. Stevens by the way, has a dual role as a psycho who comes to Hollywood to find the mother that gave him up for adoption many years ago. Those are the main story lines so if you're in the mood for some mindless eye candy, sit back and enjoy.

I can only imagine that in the mid-80s actors like Anthony Hopkins, Angie Dickinson, Candace Bergen and Robert Stack must have all needed sudden cash infusions. For what other reason would they agree to star in a miniseries so ridden with bad dialogue that it makes "Saved by the Bell" look like Masterpiece Theater.

This little "gem" pops up on WE (Women's Entertainment channel) quite often and should be savored for the guilty pleasure it is. How often do you get to see (now Sir) Anthony Hopkins trade cheezy cliches with former "Three's Company" gal Suzanne Sommers? Or watch Angie Dickinson spit out venomous double entendres? For these reasons alone, this Jackie Collins novel turned movie must be watched.

Oh, and get a load of the late Rod Steiger's ATROCIOUS toupee! Where is Sy Spurling when you need him???

If you haven't read the book, you might enjoy this second or third-rate series with lots of famous names in the cast. But the book was really very explicit, so to make this sort of sugary series in which nothing untoward happens or is shown, no full-frontal nudity of either sex... I'm sorry! Utter disappointment, and a complete waste of time. I hope some streaming network might have the guts to do a remake, this time without the Victorian prudishness that is really insulting in this version. Jackie Collins deserves better, and so do we. Dressing the piano legs as obscene is hardly what was needed, even in the 1980-s.

Suzanne Summers! Candace Bergen! Anthony Hopkins! Shoulder pads! How can you go wrong? Well, actually this mini-series is a whole world of wrong but thats part of the fun. I especially enjoyed Bergen's role as a compulsive shoplifter who lives in Beverly Hills. The movie is too long, too melodramatic but the sleazy characters and the campy dialoge will keep you laughing till the end. Once this trash fest starts I dare you to turn it off!!!

For the most part, I found this trash-fest quite entertaining. However, having read the Jackie Collins book before watching the miniseries, I was rather horrified by the casting of Stefanie Powers as "Montana Gray." In the book, that character was described as in her late twenties, with long black hair. And yet here she's being played by the 40-something redhead Powers?! I suppose that since Powers was basically the queen of 1980s miniseries and TV-movies, she had the ego and the clout to get herself cast in that role. And...It didn't work. At all!

Everyone else in the cast was fun and portrayed their respective characters believably, though.