THE BETSY (1978) – The popular 1970s television miniseries format proved to be perfect for adapting Harold Robbins’ novels since they were really just glorified soap operas, but for whatever reason this big-screen version of The Betsy attracted some very respected thespians for its cast. Name stars like Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall, Katharine Ross, Jane Alexander and others pretty much slummed it in this flick, which was to the auto industry of Detroit as Dallas was to the Texas oilfields and Falcon Crest was to the California vineyards.
In this decades-spanning saga, Laurence Olivier stars as Loren Hardeman, the patriarch of a Detroit family which dominated the auto industry until recently. Loren is in semi-retirement and seems resigned to letting his grandson, Loren Hardeman III (Duvall), continue diversifying the family’s financial empire since their car business has been in decline.
Balladeer’s Blog
Olivier’s Shakespearean talents weren’t really made to handle less grandiose dialects and accents, and his Midwestern American impersonation in The Betsy is almost as funny as his howlingly absurd Yiddish accents in The Boys From Brazil and The Jazz Singer. His oddball American accent as Douglas MacArthur in the film Inchon was bad, but not nearly as bad as the noises that come from his mouth in this movie. Continue reading
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