User Reviews

Even though Mildred Natwick is only on the television screen for no more than 20 minutes, she walks away with this TV version of Noel Coward's Masterpiece, even over Coward himself who plays the male lead. Of course, the role of Madame Arcati has always been a scene-stealing park, weather played by Margaret Rutherford in the original film version, Beatrice Lillie in the musical version "High Spirits", or Geraldine Page and Angela Lansbury in Broadway revivals. Of course, The ensemble of this TV play is superb, with Natwick and Coward joined by movie divas Claudette Colbert and Lauren Bacall, British character actress Brenda Forbes and future TV star Marion Ross.

This is a story of widower Coward on his second marriage to Colbert, having a seance where medium Natwick conjures up the spirit of his dead wife Bacall. It's no surprise that pacal wants her husband back, preferably dead than alive, but there are funny twists along the way that has Coward wishing that he was. You'll need no drinks. You'll need no smokes. You'll need no aspirin in your Cokes,Coward wrote for the musical version, and indeed, with all the ectoplasm of the spirit world in this film, none of those concoctions would help. It had been a decade since he film version, and for the TV version to star its own writer is a unique twist. Natwick was made for the role of Arcati, and the glamorous Colbert and Bacall each get moments to shine and be silly. Coward is appropriately droll, but his part is the least showy. Forbes and Ross, in smaller roles, make the most of their parts with little eccentricities standing out.

With Coward's classic "Bittersweet" playing in the background, this has the right mood as the two women first battle each other without seeing the other, and finally find themselves allies as a double dose of ectoplasm. It wasn't until television began producing live plays of this quality that big cinema stars began to accept the new medium, and fortunately, more of these gems are being discovered every day. Live audience applauds and laughs as if it was an actual theatrical play, and this gives it great theatricality.