1978 - THE BETSY, is high class trash

The Betsy is trash but it's Harold Robbins trash.  The film has a very classy look to it.  John Barry did the music, Dorthy Jenkins was a noted costume designer.   It was filmed in Newport, Rhode Island.  The director Daniel Petrie had been involved with fairly high class projects in television and the film world.

 

But, probably the most eye rolling thing about this film is the cast.  And what a cast.  Laurence Oliver, Robert Duvall, Joseph Wiseman, Tommy Lee Jones, Edward Herrmann, Jane Alexander, Katherine Ross among others.  Exactly how they were attracted to this project will forever remain a mystery.

The film's got it all, illicit love, incest, homosexuality, corporate intrigue and  I've probably left a lot of stuff left out.  The cast is easy on the eyes and plays all this junk fairly straight.  But for the life of me I can't figure out what Laurence Oliver is doing in this thing having sex with Katherine Ross playing his step-daughter married to his homosexual son.  Well you get the idea about what kind of film this is.  The producers apparently worked very hard to get an "R" rated film.

William Bast and Walter Bernstein wrote the screenplay, the film runs a never dull 125 minutes.