Lame Cherry: The Perfect Stalking Movie

As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

In 1978, it was called romantic love when a man reached out beyond his station at life and tried to win the woman he loved, but a few years afterwards in talk television it was all "stalking", and crazy people were trying to murder you.

My favorite movie of the most ridiculous nature is one which stars Richard Thomas, yes John Boy Walton, who does a phenomenal performance in having only 7 days to convince the woman he loves, holds cue cards for as she is a television celebrity, and is about to marry Mark Harmon (Jethro NCIS).

Bess Armstrong is perfectly darling in her first major role as the woman of Richard Thomas' dreams. This is a sweet love story, of a woman in love and she has not yet discovered she is yet.

It is sweet in Thomas' family is the gruff Vic Tayback and gruffer Dena Dietrich from a blue collar family, to Armstrong's affluent Van Johnson and Audra Lindley who are fantastic in their roles. As you can see this is a stellar cast from top to bottom, which includes Mimi Kennedy before she made it big, Katherine Helmond as she was big, with two of the finest actors in Richard Deacon as the wedding planner, (Lumpy Rutherford's father from Leave it to Beaver) and Mark Lenard in a cameo in Star Treks' favorite Vulcan father.

Fabian even does the singing for a love song to Bess Armstrong.

It is a shame that you will never see this movie as it is one of those creations which appeared once on CBS and went into oblivion. The copy I saw was from WCAU television in Philadelphia, but apparently there is an online version at Youtube.

What I found interesting is Bess Armstrong and Richard Thomas would pair up again in stage work in Barefoot in the Park.

They really do work very well together.

What puzzled me is the writer is John Hudock who really did nothing else in his career except this lost gem. This was a stupidly beautiful romantic movie which touches upon what most people go through in thinking about doing something stupid, but do not say things to others because if we did we would be humiliated, and if we did these things now, we would be arrested, but that is what love once was.