Posted on 03/01/2013 11:02:42 AM PST by bgill
Actress Bonnie Franklin, known to TV fans as divorced mom Ann Romano on the '70s sitcom "One Day at a Time," has died at age 69. Her family says her death was due to complications from pancreatic cancer, which Franklin revealed she was battling back in September.
(Excerpt) Read more at tv.yahoo.com ...
And I was in the bag for Sky King's niece, Penny - nothing like a faded pair of jeans and a pony tail...
I just couldn’t help but think of all the young girls going through puberty, or approaching it, sitting in the living room with their parents and knowing that those young girls living in their young girl’s internal isolation, and living in their various states and towns around the nation, were watching that show and thought that they were learning what normal was, thought that they were learning how the rest of the world outside of their family lived and thought, and made decisions, and choices, learning how to fit in and to share the common culture and social views of everyone else, which is something that all children of certain ages are desperate to know.
It broke my heart to see that show, and know the sub messaging that was being sent out by the show.
Few parents are aware of the direct line, the mind meld, that the TV screen has with their children, although they may be in the same room with their children, many are not aware of what their child is absorbing messaging at a level, at a depth, that the parent isn’t seeing or hearing.
“No, Valerie was our age but a lot of the guys were hot on the mom.”
You must have run with a crowd ahead of their time.
We hadn’t ever heard of the whole “milf” thing yet. It never occurred to us.
I can not disagree with even one word of your three-sentence comment.
I did occasionally watch the One Day at a Time. If I had nothing better to do, I might try to watch it for a few minutes (a) to try to figure out what was the point of it and (b) to rest my eyes on Valerie Bertinelli, whom I saw as a sort of human candyland.
I think that what was creepy about Bonnie Franklin's character - and "creepy" is an excellent word for it - is that she appeared to have left a perfectly fine marriage to a decent man for no reason at all, other than boredom.
No attempt, so far as I am aware, was ever made to justify or even explain why she decided one day to break up her family, take her husband out of her the lives of her daughters and take them out of his life, and go live in a cheap apartment somewhere.
In short, she represented the kind of woman that the musical genre known as "The Blues" was created to describe.
By choosing Joseph Campanella to play her ex-husband, the producers further underlined this concept. Mr. Campanella was usually chosen to play a serious, responsible, fatherly character. If they had chosen someone less likable, the whole thing might have made some of sense.
The message seemed to be that the typical American wife might at any moment just decide that marriage wasn't doing it for her, take the kids, and split. And thanks of no-fault divorce and the feminist movement, not one word of explanation was called for on her part, thank you very much.
Like you, I found that creepy... in a way that my twenty-something mind couldn't really articulate.
As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!
I really hate cancer. In the last ten years, I have had three family members and four friends diagnosed with cancer. One family member and two friends passed away from the wretched disease and my best friend’s husband is not long for this earth, either. My friend, Connie, passed away from pancreatic cancer in December. She was so amazing. Even in the face of certain death, she had a smile on her face and a song in her heart. She said she would receive a miracle or she would go home to see her Savior, so she was good with either outcome.
That said, I hate this damnned disease. I miss you guys.
The problem is that the set-up of the show didn’t ring true. Now while I could believe a dissolution of the marriage as Franklin’s character was unhappy (having gone right from high school to marriage to a much older man), what was harder to believe is that the two daughters (not that far away from being on their own) would happily agree to leave a stable life in a small town (leaving their friends, etc.) to move to a run-down area of a large city.
I remember when my cousin (about the age of the girls on the show, mid-teens) was forced to uproot from her hometown to a small town in the middle of nowhere (and this with both her parents) and she was absolutely miserable and unhappy for some time.
A realistic portrayal would’ve had the mother drag them off, only to have the girls return to dad and their hometown and normal life VERY quickly. The set-up for the show was better suited for Ann Romano to have been a widow discovering her late husband had frittered away their finances and leaving no life insurance. Of course, one probably shouldn’t put too much effort into critically analyzing sitcoms.
I loved that show. I liked Valarie. But I had a secret crush on Bonnie. She looked exactly like my English teacher. I am sad that she is gone.
RIP! My dad died of pancreatic cancer too. It kills you quickly, but it’s a wretched demise.
If wild turkeys can't fly they must be able to climb trees.
That was the message, that was the period when the media's cultural message was that a women who was married, was unliberated and not part of the movement, she was trapped in old thinking that she needed a man.
That was a period of 50 and 60 year old women leaving their husbands because of social pressure and excitement about solidarity and liberation of women, it was heart breaking for people who were wise enough to know how tragic that was for almost all of those women who succumbed to that message.
It was also during the period of promoting lesbian sex for women, it was a period of total rejection of males and male constructed marriage, etc., etc.
That period seems to have been largely erased from memory, people have no memory of how effective and powerful those movements were, people seem to think of some 1960s stuff, and then today's modern liberalism, and they don't remember the massive destruction during the 1970s when the entire government and institutions, and culture was destroyed and then replaced with something new.
50 & 60 yr old gals leaving their families? Okay, maybe so. What I remember is 30 to 40 yr olds, hittin’ the ramp- women and supposed men. The early 70’s, began the fragmented family decline. It was the turning point, for what our culture is today. The turn-around point, is going to be hard won.
Yes 30 and 40 year olds were doing the same, I was married to a 20 year old who was hearing the same message, but at least they were at the age of divorce.
What struck me at the time were the old women, with 30 and 40 year old marriages, who were buying into the concept of being liberated and finding an exciting life of dating and work (important work of course, unlike the drudgery of real life work), and being free and independent.
It was truly heartbreaking to read all the constant stories of heroic old women who left their husbands and families to discover themselves, and/or to try lesbianism.
You are correct.. it was the begin of the decline in basic values.... of family... of marriage.. of what it meant to be a husband or a wife.
Ansel, I lived in a very small town. Some of us went, most did not. Those that didn’t, betrayed their life-long friends, with those wives. It still bothers me, although, I have not lived there, for decades. That period of time, well, perhaps it’s not unlike others, I suppose.
What about Murphy Brown?
Was Quayle wrong?
Lol....Brady Bunch
....my ideal of southern Kali suburban split level ranch house lifestyle.....i was maybe 7th grade..69
And the dad was a mo.....who knew
I saw Candace Bergen,, in that odd western with Oliver Reed....where he rapes her but she loves him for it
Damn she was young....and so good looking
Reality she was a serious hippie chick groupie revolutionary hanger on who ean with a questionable crowd at around that age......could have been a Charlie victim on Cielo drive.....had goofball gotten his murders better timed
For years I had that Dan Quayle speech, and then the Atlantic Monthly(?) article by that liberal feminist who ended up praising him years later.
I used to read everything, and was also that guy who had a clipping, or more commonly, the entire magazine, book, or newspaper to prove my point.
Which was useless of course, and weird, ineffective.
Rush Limbaugh doesn’t do that, he tries to leave a little seed in everyone’s brain, he raises gardens.
Well, we are not half way home, yet. May the grace of God, guide our prayers by action.
I liked her and the show...RIP
I liked ‘All in the Family’(probably for all the wrong reasons according to the producers).
but I HATED...absolutely HATED Norman Lear and his clever way of destroying America via his Leftist Paradigm.
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