Benzadmiral
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Julia, the 1977 Oscar winner about Lillian Hellman's undertaking of a dangerous mission into pre-war Nazi Germany at the behest of her old friend Julia. All the blurbs make it sound much more thriller-ish than it really is, though it is always fascinating. In the film Jane Fonda looks nothing like the real Lillian Hellman, but that's a minor quibble. We get Jason Robards as Dashiell Hammett and we get Meryl Streep's first film role. Plus, we 1930s buffs get all the clothes and sets, and some nice details like Rosemary Murphy as "Dottie" (never mentioned as Dorothy Parker, but it's clearly her, as Hal Holbrook's character is named Alan Campbell, Dottie's 2nd [and 3rd] husband). As Dottie, Murphy has one good line that might well have come from the real Parker: She says about Alan, "Way down deep, he's very superficial."
ETA: I did wonder who two of the characters were supposed to be: Meryl Streep's Anne Marie, and John Glover's Sammy, her brother, who hints at an incestuous relationship between Anne Marie and himself (and gets clobbered by Fonda's Hellman in that scene). Were they supposed to be real people like Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell?
ETA: I did wonder who two of the characters were supposed to be: Meryl Streep's Anne Marie, and John Glover's Sammy, her brother, who hints at an incestuous relationship between Anne Marie and himself (and gets clobbered by Fonda's Hellman in that scene). Were they supposed to be real people like Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell?
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