NIGHT GALLERY: The Joanna Pettet Episodes lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2016/02/night-gallery-joanna-pettet-episodes.html
The Pettet Principle: The face that launched a thousand fantasies
For the unversed (or those who’ve left the seventies back in the ‘70s where they belong), Rod Serling’s Night Gallery is a suspense anthology TV series which ran Wednesday evenings (final season: Sundays) on NBC from 1970 to 1973. A supernatural/horror follow-up to Serling’s more sci-fi driven The Twilight Zone (1959 -1964)—still in heavy rerun rotation at the time—Night Gallery most definitely had its moments, but I remember it largely as an exercise in protracted fizzle. In an effort to build suspense in episodes whose narrative trajectory was telegraphed within minutes of its setup, it was common for even the briefest of segments to be drawn out to almost comic effect. Episodes routinely featured characters speaking in needlessly vague, cryptic, language (“You don’t mean…!”) while assiduously avoiding any and all action which might bring about a resolution to their problem. Unfortunately, when it came time for the payoff, it always seemed as though the slower the buildup, the more unsatisfying and frustratingly ambiguous the final twist.
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But as one does with SNL these days – suffer through 95% of ho-hum in hopes of the occasional 5% brilliant – Night Gallery was my Wednesday night ritual. A ritual fueled in part by a pre-cable paucity of bedtime-stalling TV options and that still-mysterious-to-me adolescent fascination with horror and the desire to be frightened. Besides, whether good or bad, each Night Gallery episode was certain to be the water fountain topic of conversation at school on Thursday mornings, so it was necessary for one to be up on such things. That being said, it’s still probable for the entire Night Gallery series to have remained just another dimlyremembered blip on my post-pubertal pop-culture chart, had it not been for the four profoundly memorable appearances made by London-born actress Joanna Pettet during the program's three-season run. Holding what I believe to be the record for Night Gallery appearances, Pettet starred in four mesmerizingly eerie segments which, due to their spectral eroticism and Pettet’s mythic dream-girl persona, thoroughly captured my imagination and burned an indelible tattoo on my teen-age psyche. Even now, some 40+ years later, I still find these episodes to be as hypnotically effective and intoxicatingly seductive as ever.
As Mata Bond in the James Bond spy spoof Casino Royale
My initial familiarity with the work of Joanna Pettet stemmed from the TV broadcast of The Group (1966, her film debut) and falling in love with her (and her killer dimpled smile) as Mata Bond Casino Royale (1967). Both films being ensemble-cast efforts in which Pettet distinguished herself splendidly as a talented dramatic actress as well as an appealing light comedienne. But by the time she made her first Night Gallery appearance in 1970, the accessible, dimpled ingénue had been replaced by the slinky, strikingly beautiful, irrefutably dangerous, ‘70s equivalent of the classic film noir Woman of Mystery. As detailed in the marvelous book Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After Hours Tour by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson, Pettet consciously used her Night Gallery appearances to cultivate a mysterious, ethereal screen persona for herself. Adopting a contemporary “look” every bit as smoldering and distinctive in the '70s as Lauren Bacall’s was in the ‘40s; Pettet offset the aloof quality of her rail thin physique, long hair, and angular features, with soft, gauzy “boho gypsy” “hippie chic” outfits from her own wardrobe. The combined effect was that of a modern seductress/enchantress: welcoming but unapproachable, a preternatural being more than human, yet slightly less than real.
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The dramatic landscape of early '70s television was largely male-centric, with women primarily occupying roles of wife and girlfriend (Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, and Charlie’s Angels would come along later). One of the reasons Pettet’s Night Gallery episodes stood out so strongly in my mind is that she broke the mold. This was no girl, this was a woman. She wasn't pliable, she wasn't agreeable, she wasn't even attainable. She was a distinct feminine force operating from a place of her own needs and desires. Provocative in her mysteriousness, the men in these narratives were drawn into HER orbit, not the other way around. The characters she played were enigmas – entities perhaps, more than real women – but they exuded elegance, romance, sex and danger. All contributing to Joanna Pettet being the perfect neo-noir femme fatale for an age that held precious little in the way of sexual mystery. The House - 1st Season : Air date December 30, 1970
Everything Jonna Pettet would build upon to greater effect in future episodes of Night Gallery appear for the first time in “The House,” a legitimately haunting ghost story that pivots 100% on Pettet’s wispy, wraithlike persona. In “The House,” directed by John Astin (Gomez of TV’s The Addam’s Family) and adapted by Rod Serling from a (very) short story by Andre Maurois, Pettet plays Elaine Latimer, a somewhat chimerical former sanitarium patient – “She’s dreamy…Never walked. Just sort of wafted along like a wood sprite. Never put her two feet on the ground.” –
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plagued by a recurring dream. Not a nightmare, but a tranquil, languorous dream in which she sees herself driving up to a secluded country house, knocking on its door, but always leaving just before the inhabitant answers.
The dream, a sun-dappled, slow-mo symphony of flowing hair and gossamer garments billowing in the wind, replays over and over in this episode, creating a truly hypnotic effect once the events of the story (she finds the dream house in real-life, only to discover it is haunted...but by whom?) call into question the very nature of reality and illusion. When a dream comes true, is it then a premonition? And when dream and reality merge, can one truly know where one ends and the other begins?
Chasing Ghosts
Whenever anyone mentions Night Gallery, unfailingly, this is the episode that comes to mind. Embodying as it does every one of the qualities/liabilities listed above as representative of the series as a whole, “The House� is perhaps quintessential Night Gallery. But in this instance, all that evasive dialog and narrative ambiguity really pays off with an indelible episode that perhaps makes not a lick of sense, but captures precisely the strange, floating quality of dreams and the way they never quite seem to hold together in the bright light of day. I was just 13-years-old when this episode premiered in 1970, and trust me in this, you cannot imagine how deeply
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this episode got under my skin. To use the vernacular of the time, it was mind-blowing. It wasn’t any one particular thing about the episode, but rather all of its elements combining to make it a uniquely unsettling TV experience. I mean, what kid can make sense of eerie eroticism? "The House" episode is one I never forgot, and I revisited it every chance I could when it cropped up on reruns. (In those pre-DVD days, anticipation played a significant part in the cultivating of pop-culture obsessions. Once a particular show aired, one had to content oneself with memory until the summer reruns came along.)
The use of slow motion photography, already an overused cliche in TV commercials and counterculture films of the day, feels oddly innovative and fresh in this episode's dream sequences
Looking at the episode today, I still feel its fundamental appeal for me lies in its mood and atmosphere - something I’ll attribute to its director - but equally clear is the fact that none of it would have worked with another actress. In all these years I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on exactly what quality Pettet brings to this story, but it essential and remains, rather appropriately, confoundingly elusive.
NightGallery.net
Keep In Touch- We'll Think Of Something: 2nd Season: Air date Nov. 24, 1971
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In this nifty Night Gallery outing, real-life couple Joanna Pettet and Alex Cord team up (for the first and only time in their 21-year marriage) in this supernatural update of the old film noir trope of the man who thinks he has all the answers, only to cross paths with a woman who’s rewritten the book. Directed and penned by Gene R. Kearney, screenwriter of one my favorite underrated Diabolique-inspired thrillers: Games (1967), “Keep in Touch - We’ll Think of Something” casts Cord as Erik Sutton, a musician who concocts elaborate, ever-escalating schemes in an effort to meet his dream-girl. That is to say, a woman he has only seen in his dreams…he really has no idea if she is a real person or even exits. However, Sutton doesn’t let the fact that she may be only a figment of his imagination dissuade him from exhausting and even harming himself in her pursuit.
Mr. Groovy Long, styled hair; sideburns; porn-stache; rugged features; and a form-fitting wardrobe of leather and suede. Alex Cord threw my adolescent hormones into overdrive
When he at last discovers the vision haunting his dreams is an actual, flesh-and blood being – an unhappily-married woman of mystery named Claire Foster – we realize in an instant just why his search for her has been so fervent; for she comes in the exquisitely beautiful, vaguely celestial form of Joanna Pettet.
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But if the visual compatibility of these two near-perfect physical specimens augers a fated meeting of two kindred spirits, a twist revealing Sutton’s object of obsession may harbor an obsession or two of her own, paints these dream lovers in a decidedly darker palette.
“Keep in Touch” successfully builds upon the enigmatic dream-girl persona Joanna Pettet established so vividly in “The House.” In fact, “Keep in Touch” feels in many ways like an “answer” episode to “House”; incorporating as it does a similar, dreams vs. reality narrative with a cherchez le femme overlay which has Alex Cord’s character acting as the surrogate for every viewer left intrigued by Pettet and that earlier segment’s ambiguity. As a supernatural noir pair, Pettet and Cord make an outrageously sexy couple (in a über-hip,‘70s way), their palpable chemistry placing one in the position of rooting for the couple’s hookup even while sensing there to be something a tad duplicitous in the mystery woman's suspiciously empathetic manner.
Best of all, in the tradition of some of the best film noirs, the ostensibly objectified female turns out to be the more complex character and the one revealed to be holding all the cards. Once again Joanna Pettet acquits herself nicely in a made-to-order episode, and easily steals every scene she’s in with a persuasive performance and her unique star-quality presence.
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The Girl With The Hungry Eyes - 3rd Season: Air date October 1, 1972
NightGallery.net
This episode is actually Joanna Pettet’s fourth and final appearance on Night Gallery, but I've listed it here in the third position because it completes what I consider to be Pettet’s Dream Girl Trilogy. A rather exceptional episode titled “The Caterpillar” precedes this one, but it’s the sole Night Gallery outing to cast Pettet in an fundamentally traditional role. "The Caterpillar" casts her as a wife and lust object, and though functional to the plot as a credible object of desire for the male protagonist/villain, as written, her strictly ornamental character has no objectives and does nothing to advance the plot herself. “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” on the other hand, is an answer to an adolescent fanboy’s prayers. Adapted from a 1949 short story by Fritz Leiber and directed by John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Reflections of Murder)
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“Hungry Eyes” is another updated nourish tale featuring an icy femme fatale; this time out, a soul vampire who lures men to their doom out of desire for her. James Farentino plays David Faulkner, a down-on-his-luck photographer whose fortunes change (but luck runs out) when a nameless woman (Pettet, known simply as The Girl) wanders into his office wanting to be a model. Although lacking in experience or even a personal history, The Girl proves a natural in front of the camera, skyrocketing Faulkner to fame as the exclusive photographer of the woman who has become, practically overnight, the hottest face in advertising.
Photographer to the stars Harry Langdon is credited with all the photos attributed to James Farentino
But for Faulkner, new-found success brings with it the nagging sense that he has unwittingly entered into some kind of Faustian bargain. Fearing that in exchange for riches, his photographs of The Girl - which seem to inflame an obsessive, trancelike desire in men - has unleashed a kind of vampiric scourge on the world, Faulkner seeks to unearth the mystery behind “the look” he’s convinced sends men to their doom.
John Astin, director of "The House" episode of Night Gallery appears as Brewery magnate Mr. Munsch
Serving almost as meta-commentary on my own obsession with Joanna Pettet’s Night Gallery career, “The Girl with
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the Hungry Eyes” builds a solid, very sexy supernatural suspenser around that indefinable something we seek in (and project onto) those idealized creatures we deify in the name of fandom. And as a fitting vehicle for Pettet’s final Night Gallery appearance, “Hungry Eyes” provides her with the opportunity to be the most forceful she’s ever been. Playing a woman who doesn't suffer fools gladly, there's a kind of bitch-goddess kick to Pettet's cool awareness of exactly what kind of effect her looks have on men. A kick made all the more exciting because of the feminist subtext inherent in having a woman turning the tables of the objectifying "male gaze" on men...to homicidal result.
Pettet's character is fully in charge in this episode, and there’s no small level of eroticism in the tug-of-war byplay she has with Farentino. Whether intentional or not, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” brings the Dream Girl Trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. The cumulative effect being a subtle point made about the degree to which men project their own fantasies upon women. not to be ignored (and certainly fitting with a male adolescent's point of view) is the equally persuasive notion that these episodes embody a kind of naif, fear-of-women trilogy. Sex and allure are as equally attached to danger and death. However interpreted, what I now find I'm most grateful for is the way these episodes depicted women women of mystery during an era of "let it all hang out" transparency. In addition, they proved marvelous showcases for Joanna Pettet's versatility and made the most of what I think is her one-of-a-kind ability to appear to inhabit the ethereal and corporeal worlds simultaneously. The Caterpillar - 2nd Season: Air date March 1, 1972
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NightGallery.net
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My strong affinity for the episodes which make up the unofficial Joanna Pettet Dream Girl Trilogy are so firmly rooted in my adolescence and decades-long crush on Ms. Pettet; I concede that I speak of these episodes with nary a trace of objectivity. I have no idea how others respond to them, I only know they represent my absolute favorite episodes of the entire series. That being said, I'm comfortable in recommending the episode titled “The Caterpillar” as one of Night Gallery’s best. One so successfully creepy and well-done, you don't have to be Pettet-infatuated in order to enjoy it. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc (helmer of the marvelous TV movie, A Summer Without Boys) this episode is another Rod Serling teleplay, adapted and significantly retooled from a short story by Oscar Cook titled Boomerang. A macabre Victorian-era love triangle set on a tobacco plantation in Borneo, “The Caterpillar” is a revenge tale with a nasty twist. It's about a man (Laurence Harvey) who devises a diabolical plan to win the beautiful wife (Pettet) of his elderly business partner (Tom Helmore), a plan which (as it must in shows like this) goes nightmarishly wrong. Laurence Harvey and character actor Don Knight star in the episode and walk off with the lion's share of honors in this atmospheric piece which I recall finding uncommonly creepy when I was young.
Joanna Pettet is once again the object of obsessive affection, but her role is so slight one is left to assume, overall quality of the script and production notwithstanding, that her longtime friendship with Laurence Harvey played a
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significant part in her accepting it. (She would co-star with Harvey in his final film–which he also directed–the oddball cannibal horror feature Welcome to Arrow Beach -1974.) While Pettet is photographed lovingly and offers a not-unpleasant change of pace as the reserved, principled wife of a man old enough to be her father; for me it just feels like a waste of natural resources. She's beautiful, yes. And she does convey a certain mystery about her that makes you wonder just why a woman of such youth and refinement would be content in such an isolated environment, but I think Pettet brings this to the role; as written I don't really think there's that much there. Which brings up the issue of why these remarkable Night Gallery showcases failed to launch Pattet into the kind of stardom she deserved. Old Hollywood always seemed to know how to showcase their glamour stars (did Hedy Lamarr or Marlene Dietrich ever play a housewife?), not so much Hollywood in the ‘70s. In my opinion, Joanna Pettet wasn't particularly well-used by either television or films following her Night Gallery years. She remained a near-constant figure on episodic TV and Movies of the Week, 70s, but her roles were akin to casting a diamond to play a Zircon. Appearing in projects that muted rather than emphasized her unique appeal, she just always struck me as so much better than a lot of her latter-career material.
In 1967, Shirley MacLaine starred in an anthology film titled Woman Times Seven. Because I consider these Night Gallery episodes represent some of Joanna Pettet's best work, AND because this is a film blog, I've taken the liberty of visualizing Pettet's four TV excursions into the macabre as a single, four-episode anthology film; Woman Times Four, if you will. A tribute to one of my favorite unsung actresses of the 70s. Unforgettable.
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All Night Gallery paintings by Thomas J Knight
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Copyright © Ken Anderson
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