Mrs. Pollifax-Spy

Dir: Leslie H. Martinson

1971

*

Leslie H. Martinson was a favorite television director of mine back in the day. He directed Airwolf, Diff’rent Strokes, Fantasy Island, CHiPS, Quincy M.E., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Wonder Woman, Swiss Family Robinson, The Six Million Dollar Man and Mission: Impossible as well as the seldom seen television movie The Kid with the 200 I.Q. (which I absolutely adored) and 1966’s classic Batman: The Movie. I know many others love his work and that his 1971 adaptation of Dorothy Gilman’s novel The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax is regarded as a childhood favorite and cult classic among them but personally I had trouble sitting through it. Mrs. Emily Pollifax of New Jersey goes to the CIA to volunteer for spy duty, being in her own opinion, expendable now that the children are grown and she's widowed. And being just what the department needed (someone who looks and acts completely unlike a spy), she's assigned to simple courier duty to pick up a book in Mexico City. However, she is kidnapped and taken prisoner in Albania along with special agent Farrell who she develops a unique bond with. The film's tagline: 'Before she joined the CIA, Mrs. Pollifax thought Red China was a set of dishes' is fairly misleading and is the production’s first mistake. While Rosalind Russell, who wrote the adaption as well as stared as Mrs. Pollifax, changed the beginning of the first Mrs. Pollifax (The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax) story for the better, I don’t think the rest of the adaption worked particularly well. The Emily Pollifax novels frequently employ comic relief and suspense. A consistent theme throughout the series is Mrs. Pollifax' tendency to take an interest in people who seem disconnected with her mission, but who either become part of the investigation and/or who prove to be of invaluable assistance to resolving the case. Recurring characters include Bishop, Carstairs' assistant; John Sebastian Farrell, an agent turned art dealer. In this adaptation he is just a deadpan agent full of one-liners and a sarcastic personality. In the original story Mrs. Pollifax is a far more elderly widow who has come to find life dull and is almost ready to end it all out of sheer boredom. Russell’s version is far perkier. Inspired by a newspaper profile of an actress who began her career in later life, she decides to fulfill a childhood ambition and apply for a job as a spy at the CIA. Meanwhile, Carstairs at the CIA is looking for an agent who can pass as a tourist in order to pick up an important microchip in Marrakesh. Due to a slight confusion, he thinks Mrs. Pollifax is one of the candidates and decides that Mrs. Pollifax is ideal; Carstairs decided this assignment carries so little danger that even one who is relatively untrained may be sent. So with minimum explanation, Pollifax is ushered off to Marrakesh in Morocco (not Mexico) to meet a bookstore owner/secret agent, exchange code phrases, leave with a book containing the microfilm. Of course, the courier mission does not go as planned, and Mrs. Pollifax finds herself in a prison in Iron Curtain-era Albania, facing harsh questioning and possible torture. But she proves to be unusually resourceful, and with her companion's assistance, manages to outwit the enemy and save the day. Many of the scenarios work brilliantly on paper but just don’t translate to screen. In one scene, Mrs. Pollifax convinces her Albanian captors to have a Christmas party in the middle of summer because, in her own words ‘I probably won’t live to see another Christmas’ and they agree. It’s a funny idea but in the film it’s just ridiculous and devoid of humour. Large chunks of the film take place in the cell Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell are held in. The conversations don’t flow very well and none of the characters make any sense. The ways Mrs. Pollifax outwits her captors are stupid beyond the realms of enjoyment and the chemistry between her and Farrell is almost non-existent, like they’re starring in totally different films, even though by the end of the film we’re supposed to be convinced that they’re now the greatest of friends. I’ve never thought of made-for-TV films as always being bad as many people I know do but this is made-for-TV at it’s very worst. The probable is that the introductory scenes promise so much more than the film eventually delivers. It is just non-stop disappointment, poor direction and bad acting from great actors. I don’t see the appeal at all and there is good reason why none of the following thirteen Mrs. Pollifax books in the series were adapted until 1999 when Angela Lansbury took on the role for a CBS special. It is hard to say whether the adaption turned out as well as anyone expected but I would hazard a guess that they didn’t, otherwise why would Rosalind Russell write the screenplay using the pseudonym C. A. McKnight?