YKWIM #57: Forget About It Friday - My First Love (1988)
Don't you just love Bea Arthur in love?
If you’ve ever watched The Golden Girls and wanted to see Dorothy Zbornak as a driver’s ed teacher, you’re in luck!
Forget About It Friday
A look back on films, both theatrical and made-for-TV, that have slipped from the pop cultural collective consciousness over the last thirty or so years. Most of these will be from the late 70s through the 90s, though not exclusively. Do these movies hold up? Have we forgotten them for good reason? Will the plots get weirder and weirder? Stay tuned!
My First Love (1988)
Provided description, typos and all: A widow (Bea Arthur) gets in touch with her former high-school sweetheart, a divorced doctor (Richard Kiley) with a young girlfriend (Joan Van Ark).
So like I said, Bea Arthur is driving instructor at a full fledged school with a front office staff and everything. Meanwhile, my driver’s ed was held at the dining room table of some random woman’s house. During my one-on-one session with her, the first thing she had me do was drive to her bank so she could deposit the check my mother gave her. Didn’t waste a second.
Anyway, Bea Arthur regularly hangs out with her gal pals at this burger joint to hash out life stuff. It’s the 80s, so this fast food restaurant has a salad bar and that’s all they eat. The tea is that Bea’s husband died nine months ago and though the marriage had been on the rocks for a while, she’s having a hard time moving on. A couple of them give her grief for not getting over her grief already. Good grief! Let a woman grieve.
The friends convince her to go to her 40th high school reunion. It’s a lame-o time and Sam, her high school ex-boyfriend she was hoping to run into, isn’t there. So Bea does the old school equivalent of sliding into his DMs— she writes him a letter. I know, crazy. He responds by sending her a plane ticket to the Hamptons, nothing else. Bea goes even though her wet blanket, forgettable daughter is against it. Flying to the Hamptons from New York seems extreme, but what do I know, I’m not rich (tbh it’s not really clear where she lives, though Manhattan is featured and it’s mentioned that she grew up in the Bronx, so somewhere in the greater New York City area).
He’s divorced, she’s widowed, things could get spicy, except he booked her a hotel room to give her space. They do fun stuff like walk on the beach, go bowling, eat forbidden foods (french fries!!!), and reminisce on the good ol’ days. The back story is they were going to get married in their early 20s but Sam wasn’t ready to commit, so Bea Arthur married her now-deceased husband soon after their break-up.
At the end of her trip, Sam lets her know that he had a good time, but he has a lady friend. Maybe this is a generational difference, maybe it’s a sign of how much worse single guys have gotten over the last three decades, but I thought it was commendable that he was upfront with her about it. Does she not know how easy it would be for him to string her along? He could have kept her dangling for years! She seemed to think it was a good thing too, but her friends don’t feel the same way and basically convince Bea Arthur to get mad at him.
Back at the Hamptons, Sam’s hip young girlfriend Claire gives him a gift (“What’s this, a stethoscope?” “It’s a bolo tie, they’re all the rage.”) and chastises his food choices, in stark contrast to Bea. She’s a super tan super blonde 80s hottie with heavy, heavy desperation. Claire keeps dropping hints that she wants to settle down and Sam barely looks up from his newspaper. Again, commitment issues, ahoy. He casually mentions that he hung out with Bea Arthur that weekend and Claire zeros in on this with a simmering rage.
There’s a funny little phone bit with Sam, Claire, and Bea Arthur that you couldn’t do now because no one calls anyone anymore.
Bea Arthur finally gets back to work after her vaycay to the Hamptons. She goes outside to meet her first driver’s ed pupil and there’s Sam, waiting for her. She flies into a rage for basically no reason, they walk down the street to talk it out, and then she’s like, “Fine, let’s get lunch.” So she basically walks out on her job???? Like that’s just what people did back then???? They go to the burger joint where her friends order things such as, “A small salad bar with a chocolate milkshake.” They run into her Debbie Downer daughter and Bea Arthur is like, I’m going to live my life, back off already! He’s a good sport about all of it and gets a hotel room in downtown Manhattan to meet her the next day.
Somehow, Claire finds out he’s staying at the hotel and she sneaks into his room along with a fat-filled smorgasbord of room service to appease him. Bea Arthur is downstairs, so you know it’s going to be a comedy of errors when Bea finds Claire in his hotel room. Sam breaks up with Claire as he runs off after Bea Arthur. Bea Arthur is furious at Sam, Sam’s trying to explain, and implausibly he falls into the Central Park pond via a very obvious stunt double. He laughs it off and they decide to give it another go.
Bea Arthur goes back to the Hamptons with him. She meets his friends, they eventually hook up, it’s very sweet, and things seem to be going okay. Of course, Claire is spying on them, at which point I groaned out loud. What’s interesting is this is where things could have gone to the typical route with Claire as the jealous woman from afar. Instead, Bea Arthur sees her outside the house invites her in for a cup of coffee and a very Dorothy Zbornak kitchen table talk. Claire admits that she was with Sam for the last five years and they still lived separate lives though she really wanted a family with him. She blames herself instead of his commitment issues. It’s a little sad and gave her some needed empathy. Where’s her burger joint friends to set Claire straight and tell her to dump his ass? Nowhere.
It’s bizarre that this character is supposed to be around my own age. Obviously, I’m no one’s Pretty Young Thing, never was, never will be, thank goodness. It seems like a very boring, shallow life, to be honest. If you take anything away from this, you can’t depend on anyone else for your happiness.
What’s really getting Claire down is that her big 4-0 is coming up and it seems Claire has no friends, so the wife of Sam’s friend is planning the big party. Again, sad. Even this lady tells Claire to get over Sam already. Claire’s got that crazy look in her eyes that says, hahahahah no way.
Sam is like, we gotta go to the party, we have to move the plot forward, while Bea Arthur has a bad feeling about this. It’s black tie (lol), even the band is wearing tuxedos, and there’s a big table of gifts. When my friends turn 40, we wear t-shirts, go to a brewery, and buy the birthday person a beer. Again, a lot has changed in thirty years.
Claire greets them at the door in a fantastic sparkly dress, her hair teased to perfection, with a hot hunk her own age on her arm. Go Claire, it’s your birthday! Except… she doesn’t care about the hot hunk, she only has eyes for old fart Sam. Dammit, Claire!! You were making progress as a character.
She pretends to faint to get Sam’s attention but Bea Arthur is having none of this bullshit and helps Claire to the bathroom. The birthday girl is bereft. “I kept him young!” she cries. “I gave him the best years of my life!” Claire tells Bea Arthur that Sam is going to leave her too, and it gets under Bea’s skin. She yells at Sam for never fully committing and goes home to her old life.
Back at the burger joint, Bea Arthur’s gal pals are sitting around, shooting the shit, and the hot goss is that Bea Arthur is moving to California. Oh no! Sam shows up, hears the news, and when Bea comes by, Sam finally admits to her that he has a problem with commitment. He should have married Bea Arthur all those years ago but it’s not too late for them. It’s never too late!!! They kiss as the camera pans out.
Does she still have the job that she walked out on? How will she tell her sourpuss daughter? What about his never-seen son and ex-wife? Will Bea Arthur move to the Hamptons with him? Who lives at the Hamptons full time anyway? Logistics have no chance when it comes to loooveeeeee.
Highs:
Bea Arthur, of course! Lots of great one-liners without the Golden Girls laugh track.
Multiple mullets. It’s like eye-spy! I spotted at least three.
The chemistry between Bea Arthur and Richard Kiley is very playful and cute. He’s an interesting casting choice because he’s likable even when you’re not supposed to like him.
I found this movie poster under the name “Second Chance.” I love when movies change their names and there’s evidence of the other title out in the world.
Unrelated, but one of my best trivia team names was Don’t Worry, Bea Arthur.
Lows:
The production value is… not high, hence the extremely obvious stunt double.
The very 80s diet talk 🙄
There were lots of unnecessary padding to make this reach an hour and a half running time (two hours total with commercials as a TV movie).
Part of me wishes Claire would have gotten with the hunk at the end, but you know, life doesn’t always end in a neat bow like the ending of Pretty In Pink. Remember to never settle for less than you’re worth. Don’t stay with someone for five years if the relationship isn’t going the way you want it to go. Find a good therapist, reach out to your old friends, try a dorky hobby you always wanted to do. I bet Claire has a secret crafter inside her just waiting for a glue gun.
Final Verdict:
Maybe if it the script was smoothed out a bit, the budget was doubled, and it was released in theaters, it might have stuck in the pop culture consciousness. I can’t think of any other Bea Arthur movies off the top of my head, can you?
Overall, not a bad Sunday night movie. Bea Arthur is still very Dorothy Zbornak in this, but really, is that such a bad thing?
Thank you for reading about an old ass movie that the pop culture zeitgeist has forgotten! Any typos, weird spacing, or grammar mistakes are the result of my fallible fingers. Links to my social and website can be found below. You can buy me a cup of coffee to give me the energy to keep doing this baloney. Any questions or comments, feel free to send them along— andrea.laurion@gmail.com