This Aaron Spelling produced T.V. movie (rumored to be a potential anthology series) is an all-star "Love Boat" where the title really could be "mail plane", tragically crashing and delaying the delivery of important letters for years. This is a film where the narrator is a postman (Henry Jones of "The Bad Seed" and TV's "Phyllis" fame) who delivers the missing correspondence that reveals the truths about the dramas of the first 3/4 of the rather short film. The divas are MGM musical star Jane Powell, drama queens Barbara Stanwyck and Ida Lupino and one of the heirs to the Barbara Hutton estate, the gorgeous Dina Merrill. The Jane Powell/John Forsythe film involves revelations concerning infidelity, while the Ida Lupino segment concerns an ultra possessive mother. However, the best segment is the Stanwyck/Merrill pairing as a couple of sisters who fight over the same man (Leslie Nielsen, and surely, I AM serious!) and the devious methods conductor Nielsen utilizes to get his hands on a fortune.
While the other two segments are notable for being very "domestic", the third segment I mention is very much in tuned with what Spelling would do years later on "Dynasty" and his other prime-time soaps. Stanwyck is the domineering sister who covets Merrill's beau, and seeing method in this powerful woman's madness, Nielsen chooses money over love, much to his detriment. The characters here are all a bit amoral, and the payoff is classic in the old Warner Brothers/MGM women's film tradition. Stanwyck shows she still has the power to dominate every scene she is in, and Merrill shows she's a tiger in kitten fur who really has what it takes when she gets the chance. This is one of those fun "so bad it's good!" T.V. movies that today would end up automatically on Lifetime, and to see so much Hollywood royalty in one 75 minute movie makes it even a lot more fun than any "Love Boat" or "Fantasy Island" would do a decade later.
While the other two segments are notable for being very "domestic", the third segment I mention is very much in tuned with what Spelling would do years later on "Dynasty" and his other prime-time soaps. Stanwyck is the domineering sister who covets Merrill's beau, and seeing method in this powerful woman's madness, Nielsen chooses money over love, much to his detriment. The characters here are all a bit amoral, and the payoff is classic in the old Warner Brothers/MGM women's film tradition. Stanwyck shows she still has the power to dominate every scene she is in, and Merrill shows she's a tiger in kitten fur who really has what it takes when she gets the chance. This is one of those fun "so bad it's good!" T.V. movies that today would end up automatically on Lifetime, and to see so much Hollywood royalty in one 75 minute movie makes it even a lot more fun than any "Love Boat" or "Fantasy Island" would do a decade later.