[Mini-Review] That Girl in Wonderland

[progbear]

That Girl in Wonderland (1973)

Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas) goes to the Wonder Children’s Book Publishing office to interview for what she thinks is a secretarial position. Surprise! It’s actually an interview for assistant editor! Can Ann come up with an outline for the big Christmas season special book all while keeping up her social life with her boyfriend Donald and managing to take care of her after-hours errands?

Up until now, this is one of the few episodes of the ABC Saturday Superstar Movie that I had not seen. Surprisingly, it’s one of the better ones. Not laugh-out-loud funny (well, except for the Imagine Spot near the end when a number of different famous children’s stories collide in a four-car pile-up) but affable and gently entertaining. And I kept waiting for the moment when Ann would abandon her job to keep her loser boyfriend happy...a moment I am glad to say never happened. In retrospect I should not be surprised; after all, this was Marlo Thomas right around the time of Free to Be, You and Me. Good on them for putting forth a subtly feminist message without hammering you over the head with it (something FtBYaM was not so good at). Notable in that, at Ann’s new workplace, there is exactly one male employee (not counting the building’s window-washer!).

Also noteworthy in how it doesn’t sugar-coat the workplace; not everyone who Ann works with is nice! Her boss, while not evil, is definitely demanding and pushy. The office’s switchboard operator, on the other hand, is a b**** on wheels! She seems to take great delight in trying to get Ann fired and ruin her relationship with Donald, for seemingly no other reason than pure spite. On an unrelated note (I guess), it looks like they used Penny Marshall for the character model.

Like most of the SSM episodes, this was pretty clearly meant as the pilot to a series, which alas never came to fruition. I finally saw it when someone posted the whole thing (with vintage 1973 commercials! Ah, the memories!) to Youtube. Unfortunately, it’s in dreadful quality, with tons of artifacting, and it looks as though it were upscaled from 352×240 (or less!). I guess we have to take rarities like this when we can. Made by Rankin-Bass, and it looks it (if you remember the ’Twas the Night Before Christmas special, this has a very similar look).

Comments

Saw this on Latest Things

[nodrog]

I'm glad you perceived the problem with Free To Not Be Danny Thomas’ Daughter - which was the true (and all too obvious) meaning of that effort.  She and Nancy Sinatra had the same problem, but they both could have simply used a different screen name, like Winona Horowitz or Stephen “Richard Bachman” King.  Step out from the name, and let’s see how good you are.

Neither ever did.