http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=2262
by Phil Hall
(2008-10-31)
BOOTLEG FILES 257 "Katherine" (1975 TV movie with Sissy Spacek, Henry
Winkler and Art Carney).
LAST SEEN: We cannot confirm the film's last public exhibition.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: Only on labels offering public domain dupes.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It is hard to say, since the film doesn't
appear to be in the public domain.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE : Not until music
clearance rights are settled.
--
The recent efforts by the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign to link
Barack Obama to Bill Ayers, a member of the Weather Underground
during the 1960s, probably brought more yawns and confusion than
outrage to people under the age of 60. Despite the rabid exclamations
of Obama "pallin' around with terrorists," there are two generations
of Americans who probably never heard of the Weather Underground.
Back in 1975, however, the turmoil of the anti-war protests in the
mid-to-late 1960s was still very fresh. ABC-TV, tapping into the
cultural upheaval, shrewdly rushed forth a made-for-television movie
that covered the underpinnings of the socio-political counterculture
movement. The resulting production, the 1975 film "Katherine,"
actually turned out to be a compelling and memorable achievement.
While it is recalled today primarily as a career stepping stone for
two up-and-coming actors, it is nonetheless a fascinating endeavor
that provides a raw slice of America's forgotten history.
"Katherine" was inspired by the true story of Diana Oughton, the
daughter of a prosperous Illinois real estate tycoon and politician.
She abandoned her wealthy lifestyle to dabble in Peace Corps
do-gooder work in Guatemala and left wing politics at home before
turning radical and joining the Weather Underground. Oughton died in
1970 when a bomb she was building detonated prematurely. "Katherine"
also borrowed from the then-current headlines involving Patty Hearst,
another heiress whose exact level of voluntary involvement with the
Symbionese Liberation Army remained hazy in 1975.
In this film, the eponymous protagonist is a Denver heiress who
graduates from Wellesley and takes a Peace Corps assignment in an
unnamed South American country. Katherine's attempts to bring
literacy to the local peasants results in chaos, with the local
ruling elite whipping the laborers who are interested in learning how
to read. But Katherine is not eager to join in the armed struggle
with the guerrillas who live in the neighboring mountains. To her
mind, violence is not the answer.
However, Katherine changes her mind when she returns to the U.S. and
gets work as a teacher in an all-black school located in the basement
of a church deep in Jim Crow Dixie. Although she falls madly in love
with Bob Kline, the hirsute radical who is the only other white
person at the school, Katherine winds up getting muck from the racist
crackers (who call her a "nigger lover") and the neighborhood
knockoffs of the Black Panther movement (who abhor the notion of
whitey teaching the black kids).
Katherine and Bob decide to motor off across America, where they
engage in draft card burning activities on college campuses and get
busted up by the Chicago cops during the protests around the 1968
Democratic convention. Katherine gets pregnant, but decides the world
is too rough for a newborn and opts for an abortion. She then joins
Bob in pallin' around with terrorists who hang posters of Karl Marx
and Ho Chi Minh on their bare walls. Bob eventually gets tired of
Katherine and splits to Canada, but Katherine remains and takes on an
assignment to deliver a bomb to a San Francisco courthouse.
Structurally, "Katherine" is a bit peculiar. The film appears to be
four different simultaneous happenings: a documentary-style interview
session where people who knew Katherine (her parents, sister, best
friend and ex-boyfriend) talk about her in the past tense, the
journey that Katherine takes through the streets of San Francisco to
reach her courthouse bombing destination while a detective follows
her (anyone who vaguely familiar with that city will be amazed at the
tortured route she takes), the extended dramatic flashbacks that show
Katherine's descent from fashionably leftism into violence
radicalism, and odd confessions of a black-clad Katherine in a white
room, where she babble about her love for America (it may take a
while to figure out what that's all about...no spoilers here, but the
effect is actually deviously clever when it becomes clear where
Katherine really is).
Art Carney received top billing for "Katherine," which is
understandable since he was just coming off his Academy Award winning
performance in "Harry and Tonto." He plays Katherine's ultra-rich and
ultra-forgiving father, and he's actually damn good – for anyone who
only knows Carney for his second banana comedy status on "The
Honeymooners," there is a huge surprise in watching him handle a
cliched role with subtlety and sincerity. (His performance earned an
Emmy Award nomination.) A bit less successful are Jane Wyatt as
Katherine's easily agitated mother and Julie Kavner as her comic
relief best friend – the roles are written as stereotypes and neither
actress has the depth to turn their respective parts into three
dimensional characters.
But there is Katherine, and she is played by a young Sissy Spacek.
She wasn't quite famous yet – she was the female lead in Terrence
Malick's 1973 "Badlands," but that film was only popular with critics
and not with audiences. Spacek was still paying her dues in
performances on TV series like "The Waltons" and "The Rookies," and
"Katherine" offered her the opportunity to achieve her most prominent
performance to date. Spacek took the part and handled it brilliantly
– she captured the mix of emotions of the young woman in her
transformation from strident do-gooder to dedicated social activist
to rabid radical. Her segments in the eerie white room, when she
"explains" her actions, are wonderfully jarring – it is easy to
understand how she was cast in the title role of her breakthrough
1976 film "Carrie" based on those marvelously off-kilter scenes.
But Spacek was not the only star in ascension here. Katherine's
boyfriend was played by Henry Winkler, who was just starting to
connect with TV audiences as Fonzie on "Happy Days." His character in
"Katherine" was the polar opposite of Fonzie: a motormouthed,
intensely political hedonist who would rather run from trouble
instead of facing it head-on. Winkler's performance is as memorable
as Spacek's – he is a kinetic force of energy that gives roaring
passion and clay feet to the radicalism of the era. It is not
surprising that Jeremy Paul Kagan, the director of "Katherine,"
tapped Winkler as the star of his next project, the feature film
"Heroes." Sadly, that underrated film failed to propel Winkler into
big screen stardom – his iconic status was locked into the small
screen via "Happy Days."
"Katherine" was well-received in its initial U.S. television
broadcast, and it reportedly played in European theaters with a few
additional scenes that were deleted from the TV version (including a
pot-smoking sequence and Katherine's money-raising work in a strip
club). With the advent of home video, "Katherine" has turned up on
several labels specializing in public domain titles. This is odd,
since the film doesn't appear to be in the public domain. It does,
however, have music clearance issues – the soundtrack offers covers
of several classic tunes by the Beach Boys and Crosby, Stills, Nash
and Young – and that may explain its absence from commercial home
entertainment release and its prevalence as a bootlegged dupe.
It is not difficult to locate a bootleg of "Katherine," and the film
deserves to be seen. After all, when Sissy Spacek and Henry Winkler
are trying to overthrow the government, it's more than acceptable to
be pallin' around with those terrorists!
--
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The unauthorized duplication and distribution of
copyright-protected material, either for crass commercial purposes or
profit-free shits and giggles, is not something that the
entertainment industry appreciates. On occasion, law enforcement
personnel boost their arrest quotas by collaring cheery cinephiles
engaged in such activities. So if you are going to copy and
distribute bootleg videos and DVDs, a word to the wise: don't get
caught. Oddly, the purchase and ownership of bootleg videos is
perfectly legal. Go figure!
.
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