My brother recorded this show after Mystery, hosted by Vincent Price, years ago and it was amazing. An incredible story of Kathleen, a little girl who plays baseball, shoots marbles, climbs trees, reads Batman comic books, and fights with boys, who has to get her pigtails restyled into a perm and start looking more like a little girl, by 1947 Arkansas standards. The opening scene is of Kathleen winning the baseball game, but the boy who gets the homerun getting all the credit. Kathleen doesn't care. She is one of the guys. Jennifer Miller plays Kathleen. The part calls for no big stretch from a child, but Miller stays distant from what she doesn't want to do and off in her own world good enough without looking precocious. She never grasps what the problem is. Her best friend is a bullied nerd, Jeeter, played by Jordan Weeks. Right from the start, he is a scene stealer, talking through his nose about what Batman did and what the Joker did. Even when Kathleen picks on Jeeter too much about his not being able to climb trees does Jeeter even point out that she is only a 'sissy girl'. He will later abandon her when his glasses get broke when she fights two twin boys while playing marbles. This program is filled with so much nostalgia, it is astonishing. For me, it was the twin boys shooting marbles on the ground, their chins pressed into their knees. My brother and I both used to do this practice while sitting on the ground too. While you may be thinking Kathleen is the star and Jeeter is the scene stealer, two more appear to run away with the show. One is Aunt Estelle, played by Lisa Foster. Coiffured and lipsticked and hair lacquered in place, wrapped up in belts and gloves and high heels, topped off with a flapjack hat, Estelle was a hideous woman who would be embarrassed if Kathleen didn't make her beauty appointment on time. This was the mother who knew for certain that children were to be seen and not heard. But the star of the program was Rahda Delmarter, who played Kathleen's mother. As she tried to get Kathleen ready for the beauty appointment, pleaded with Kathleen's father to quit encouraging her boyish ways with clubhouses and model airplanes and console Estelle about Kathleen, you would think Delmarter couldn't perform, but the final scene in Kathleen's bedroom as Mom is compromising and Kathleen realizes it is important she look like a little girl, Delmarter runs with it. You would not believe scouting could be so horrendous to a person. Mom is admitting that much of Kathleen's behaviour is her fault as well as Kathleen's father. And all of this in thirty minutes. I don't know who writer/director Beth Brickell is, but she obviously has talent. Ten stars out of ten.
