In this latest trip across the border from MovieLand to TVLand (and also from TodayLand into MemoryLand), I'll reveal how serendipity is a marvellous phenomenon and comes to my rescue in all manner of different ways, as it did yet again earlier this year.
Ever since the late 1970s, I've had a haunting intro theme to an American TV show running through my mind. I can well remember my mother Mary Shuker watching this show when it was screened here in the UK, but I simply glanced up at it intermittently while doing other things, not really taking much notice. Consequently, all that I've ever been able to recall of it other than its theme music was that its storyline featured three young women, plus the face of the actress playing one of them, but I never knew her name. I dimly recall having seen her in other TV shows and a few films too, but I haven't been able to remember what they were either, so I couldn't track her name down as a means of beginning to find out what the TV show was with that lovely theme, and Mom couldn't remember the show's title or the actress's name either. So there it remained, a baffling mystery to both of us, but with a memorable melody playing wistfully in my head from time to time whenever I recalled it.
On 20 March 2021, however, while using Google to find some movie-related images of something entirely different, up popped a close-up of the unidentified actress from the unidentified TV show! It turned out that she is Cristina Raines, and once I had her name it didn't take me long to trace the show. It proved to be a three-part TV mini-series from 1978 entitled Loose Change, aka Those Restless Years (not to be confused with the long-running Aussie TV soap from the same time period entitled The Restless Years), broadcast by NBC.
And
how did I know for certain that this was the correct show? Because what also
popped up was a certain YouTube video of that awesome, long-lost (for me) intro
theme, which was indeed the intro theme to Loose
Change, as it was accompanied visually by clips and stills from that show! Result!!
(It is especially fortunate, moreover, that I encountered when I did that
particular video on YouTube, as originally uploaded by heliozebra,
because it has since disappeared from there, but here it is below:)
Wait long enough and the answers will come – Mom often said those words to me, and no doubt she'd smile if she knew that her words had come true yet again, especially in relation to this particular mystery that had perplexed both of us for so long. How I wish that she could have been here to have known its answer at long last.
As for the show itself: directed and produced by Jules Irving, and first screened in 1978, Loose Change is based upon the eponymous bestselling biographical novel by Sarah Davidson, and stars the afore-mentioned Raines, plus Season Hubley and Laurie Heineman, as three young women (journalist Kate Evans, artist Tanya Berenson, and civil-rights activist Jenny Reston respectively, who are based in turn upon Davidson and two of her friends, Susie and Tasha).
They first meet and become friends living together while attending the University of California, Berkeley, during the early 1960s, as shown in Part 1. They then reunite at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago as seen in Part 2. And they meet up once again but this time at an Arizona commune, as revealed in Part 3. The principal focus is upon Raines's character, Kate, who accordingly receives more screen time than the others do. Secondary characters include the young women's Korean veteran friend Rob Kagan (played by Guy Boyd) and Kate's boss Tom Feiffer (Theodore Bikel).
During its lengthy running time (originally 6 hours when first screened in February 1978, but edited down to 4 hours when rescreened and retitled Those Restless Years in July 1978), Loose Change duly unfurls the many twists, turns, and intertwinings of the trio of friends' lives during a momentous decade that also saw radical changes and turmoil in the socio-cultural history of the USA itself.
Ironically, and sadly, however, perhaps the best-remembered aspect of Loose Change as far as TV history is concerned is that it featured in a major screening error. During this show's original, February 1978 broadcast, NBC accidentally screened Part 3 instead of Part 2 to its East Coast viewers on 27 February, with the mistake not being realized until the first 17 minutes of Part 3 had already been screened, at which point it was halted, TV announcer Howard Reig apologized on NBC's behalf for the mishap, and then Part 2 was screened in its entirety. For me, however, it will be this otherwise largely-forgotten show's beautiful theme tune that will stay in my memory, just as it always has done from 1978 onwards.
If you'd like to watch this long-hidden gem of a TV mini-series, I'm delighted to say that it is finally available to purchase and watch on DVD, from Modcinema (click here for full details) and also from TrueTVMovies – click here for full details).
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film/TV reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment