‘The Betsy’ — steer clear of it

Press, 17 July 1978, Page 10

‘The Betsy’ — steer clear of it

Someone must be blackmailing Sir Laurence Olivier. Either that, or the film company decided to toss good money after bad and make I this disaster just because it had already shelled out SIM to the book’s author. “The Betsy.” now playing at the Westend. deserves" the same fate here as it had overseas, where it did not just sink like a stone — it hardly even surfaced. Olivier almost brings it off in spite of it all, by having everyone on almost as much as he has success with various women. But he doesn’t quite make the put-on stick, so the film falls flat. It is another dumb chapter in the never-ending saga of Harold Robbins Place, and it should have stayed at home. A better name for the film would have been “The Godfather Meets Son of the Carpetbaggers.” Then again, that might have been a libellous slur on the other two films. Even the advertisements set the stage — “Sizzling with action, spiced with girls, charged with sex” . . . “What you dream, they do.”

(Do you dream of being photographed close up doing a lot of tongue-in-mouth kissing?) The automobile is shown as a sex symbol, with a naked body on wheels being caressed. Such an original notion.

The director, Daniel Petrie, has done such forgettable

things as “The Bramble Bush,” “The Idol” and “The Spy with a Cold Nose.” This one joins the queue. Olivier is the head of a big automobile company. He is 86 years old and has an idea for a people’s car. He plays his part according to the cranky, cantankerous school of acting; the only expressions he leaves out are dem tootin’, holy Mackinaw Bob and heavens to Betsy. His accent and way of talking are somewhere be-

tween Walter Brennan and Charlie Ruggles. He wants to build a car just as well as Ford and Hitler did. He is tired of being dumped down in Florida “to hear the coconuts drop.” He is forced to say things like “Sumpin” (something), “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled” and “Heh-heh-heh-heh.” Later on, he even comes up with a “Hiya, palsy-walsy.”

Fast women and fast cars are alluded to, of course, as are “the monsters, the hereditary monarchs of Detroit” (car company owners). It is all very Robbins-egg stupid. In scene after scene, the action between men and women follows The Look — The Smile — The Race into Bed progression.

Olivier is called Number One, and he is having trouble selling his car idea to the

;iyounger folk on the board. ; They want to diversify into refrigerators. “Over my dead body,” he says. "Any way you want it, Grandfather,” says Robert Duvall, who would be hard put to give a bad perfor-

mance no matter how trashy the film.

, When in doubt. the camera zeroes in on Grandfather to give this shoddy product an air of respectability. There is another sure-fire clue in the film — whenever the violin music comes up, someone is up to a bit of hanky-panky. Olivier’s part, which start? out as the most inane thing in an expensively-embarras-sing film, turns out to be tha best thing. Near the end, it seems as if the rising young sub-hero is in for the Mafia window treatment. You are at the edge of your seat, thinking that justice is about to be done and most of the actors you have, endured will get what’s coming to them. Then along comes shakylegs Olivier to put the squelch on the whole thing. Shucks, Big Grand-daddy, you had to go and spoil it. In another few minutes, we would have had something to cheer about.