THE LOVE MACHINE (1971)

When we first see John Phillip Law, he's doing a human interest news story on the New York affiliate for TV network IBC. Dyan Cannon, the young wife of the head of the network (Robert Ryan), is impressed by him—more so his looks than his talent, it seems—and she talks her husband into making him the national news anchor, over the objections of Jackie Cooper, the network president. (I was constantly confused by people's titles and therefore the power relationships that are in play.) In six months, Law, who lives alone with a caged sparrow he rescued, is the head of the news department and is juggling relationships with several women. Jodi Wexler, an up-and-coming model, falls in love with him and gives him an ankh ring, which means nothing to him as he sleeps with whomever he fancies and isn't about to be tied down. This even applies to Dyan Cannon, who, while cheating on her husband with Law, becomes unreasonably jealous when she catches Law in a threesome. Law's closest, perhaps only, friend is gay fashion photographer David Hemmings. Law tells Hemmings, "The thing I like about you is you never make a pass"; Hemmings' reply is "I'm biding my time." Cooper sells a variety show to IBC with second-rate comic Shecky Greene, partly to stick it to Law, who hates the idea. The show's a hit, leading to tense relations between Cooper and Law, with Ryan trying to keep the peace but also realizing that Law is more important to the network than Cooper. Eventually, Jodi commits suicide, and a kinky joke on the part of Hemmings involving a slave bracelet threatens to bring Law down on a morals clause charge.

I took almost three pages of plot summary notes on this movie, so I've left a lot out. But the bloated narrative serves the soap opera tone of the movie perfectly. Based on a Jacqueline Susann novel, audiences expected trashy, sexy melodrama, and they got it, though the movie did not do nearly as well financially as the earlier VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. In some ways, this is a slightly better movie than DOLLS; it's a little glossier and in general better acted. But it's not as fun as DOLLS. There is no Patty Duke yelling, "Sparkle, Neely, sparkle!" and no one's wig gets flushed down a toilet. There's also a big hole in the center of the film in the form of the title character (actually, Law calls television "the love machine," but we all know it's really him). Law was never a very demonstrative actor, and his plastic performances as the hunky angel in BARBARELLA and anti-hero of DANGER: DIABOLIK may well be his career peaks. His glossy looks serve him well here as a face onto which his various admirers can read whatever they want, but his plastic performance gives us not one iota of insight into the character's inner life or motivations—granted that's partly due to the script, and may well be intentional, but it makes it difficult to care about him, even during his final downfall, which is more or less played for laughs (in fact, the ambiguous ending suggests that he escapes a downfall altogether). 

Old pros Ryan and Cooper are fine, though Cooper has to suffer the indignity of a weirdly stand-alone camp-comic scene of the Hallelujah Chorus playing as he comes out of a meeting. Cannon acquits herself well, though Shecky Greene seems miscast and uncomfortable in a role that could have been based on him. In smaller roles, I liked Maureen Arthur as a PR worker known as the "Celebrity Banger," and William Roerick as a network assistant who is present for most of the big blowups. Greg Mullavey (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) pops up in a couple of scenes, and Jodi Wexler, a model who never made another movie, is fine as the model and tragic figure all melodramas need. David Hemmings is saddled with the part of the stereotyped gay man, but he seems to be trying to make it a little subtler than the norm in those days, and he largely succeeds. He's the only character I thought might actually be fun to spend time with. We know that Law's character, Robin Stone, has deep-seeded problems, and for a time it's suggested he might hiding gay tendencies. In one scene when he declines to sleep with a hooker, she calls him a fag and he smacks the shit out of her; in another scene, when an executive wonders out loud if Stone is AC/DC, Cannon replies, "Balls." A gay smear is behind the final scene, but Stone remains steely straight all the way through. It might have been fun if a little real ambiguity crept in about his sexual proclivities. This is far from a great film, but as a chic 70s melodrama, it's fairly watchable. Pictured are Cannon and Law. [DVD]