Ed Asner is, of course, a now-legendary character lead on television but his major roles in feature films have been few and far between. This one, however, appearing as it did just around the time the award-winning LOU GRANT was ending its original run, should have been at least a minor hit. Instead, I'm betting most of you never heard of it. O'HARA'S WIFE is a sort of modern version of the classic TOPPER-style ghost story. In this case, O'Hara's wife (duh) has died but that doesn't stop her (Mariette Hartley) from appearing and interfering in his relationship with his kids. One of the kids, in fact, is played by Jodie Foster which, in and of itself should raise this above a footnote but...Note that this ad is for a special showing for Academy consideration. They obviously had hopes. I doubt that it had a wide release at all.
Directed and co-written by a William Bartman (NOT Bart Simpson!) as his only feature film credit, other TV favorites like Tom Bosley and Ray Walston appear but the film never really managed to get itself noticed.
No comments:
Post a Comment