The Users: Glossy '70s Trash TV

I grew up in the 1970s, a precocious child and an avid, advanced reader from the age of 8 or 9. I had a voracious need to devour anything and everything I could get my hands on. After blowing through all of The Wizard of Oz books, every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mystery, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Wonka series and James & the Giant Peach, I set my sights on my parents’ vast bookshelf that lined the entire back wall of the living room. And, boy, did I ever get an education.

I was indiscriminate in my tastes, as were my well-educated parents. I read Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist long before I was ever old enough to see the films that were made from them. I read Updike, Mailer, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon. (The Other Side of Midnight was my favorite.) I read Judith Krantz’s steamy Scruples and thumbed through Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex, scrutinizing every detailed illustration. I even read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, a tome still potent enough to make grown men blush.

One of the adult-themed books I best remember was The Users by Joyce Haber. It was a seamy, tawdry tale of how a clever young hooker infiltrated the Hollywood movie machine and became a major power player, using her wiles and skills in the art of love. The sex scenes were explicit and graphic, and it was said that all the characters depicted were based on real-life actors and moguls of contemporary 1970s filmdom.

Hollywood gossip columnist Joyce Haber

Along with Rona Barrett, Joyce Haber was a doyenne of 1970s movieland gossip, having inherited the mantle from Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, who had wielded a tremendous amount of power with their well-read columns in major newspapers during Hollywood’s classic golden era. So I assumed Ms. Haber knew from whereof she spoke as she weaved her page-turning story of Elena Brent née Schneider, closeted gay movie hunk Randall Brent, billionaire entrepreneur Reade Jamison and the making of a big Hollywood blockbuster called Rogue’s Gallery.

Producer Douglas S. Cramer and Aaron Spelling with Lana Turner 

In 1978, the book was adapted into an ABC TV movie of the week, coproduced by Aaron Spelling and Douglas S. Cramer. Spelling, of course, was already a superstar producer, a former actor (I Love Lucy) who found his niche behind the camera, at that time already the creator of the megahit TV series Starsky and Hutch and Charlie’s Angels. Douglas Cramer was also a successful TV producer, with Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, The New Adventures of Wonder Woman and the original TV movie version of The Love Boat already under his belt. Together, Spelling and Cramer would team up to produce some of the most memorable and iconic series of the 1970s and 1980s, including Love Boat, Dynasty and Vega$. 

(Joyce Haber happened to be married to Douglas S. Cramer at the time, which may have had something to do with her lucrative TV movie deal for The Users. Later, Cramer and Spelling would also produce the miniseries of Jackie Collins’s Hollywood Wives, which is a better adaptation and a more entertaining guilty pleasure than this version of his ex-wife’s book.)

Jaclyn Smith as Elena Brent—a little too pure!

Not currently available for streaming or on DVD (though lucky seekers may find a bootleg copy uploaded to YouTube), the TV version of The Users is basically a Spelling Productions family affair, headlined by Jaclyn Smith of Charlie’s Angels (the only Angel to appear in all five seasons of the series) as Elena Brent and John Forsythe (soon to be of Dynasty) as Reade Jamison. 

Curtis, Smith and Forsythe: Not the Carringtons or Colbys

The rest of the cast is reminiscent of an episode of The Love Boat, which was famous for giving past-their-prime classic stars a chance to keep working in the medium of television: Oscar winners Joan Fontaine (Suspicion, The Witches) and Red Buttons (Sayonara, The Poseidon Adventure) play the shrewd procuress Grace St. George and sleazy super agent Warren Ambrose. Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot, Spartacus) is Randall Brent, the former A-list star who marries Elena. Darren McGavin (The Night Stalker) is Henry Waller, gruff and macho author of the book Rogue’s Gallery that’s being adapted into a big film.

Jaclyn Smith's Oscar winning costars: Buttons and Fontaine

Mamas & the Papas alum Michelle Phillips is superstar Marina Brent (whose popularity in the book is compared to the likes of Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli), daughter of Randy. Perpetually tanned and laid-back George Hamilton (Love At First Bite) plays director Adam Baker, apparently an amalgam of several hot young directors of the ’70s. Seasoned character actors like the comic Pat Ast (Heat), throaty-voiced Carrie Nye (The Group) and curly-haired Alan Feinstein (Looking for Mr. Goodbar) round out the cast, lending support to the ‘big names.’

Michelle Phillips: Move over Barbra, Liza and Bette

Hamilton: Too handsome to be behind the camera?

The production values are pure Spelling and foreshadow the look and feel of Dynasty a couple of years later: indeed, Jaclyn Smith and her castmates are dressed by none other than the legendary Nolan Miller, who was discovered by Aaron Spelling while he was working as a Beverly Hills florist. 

Designer Nolan Miller and one of his many beautiful leading ladies

I wish I could say that The Users is a great or even good film; it really isn’t, and the movie bears only the most superficial resemblance to the book, which was a bawdy, racy and incisive look behind the screen at Hollywood politicking and deal-making. The TV movie version obviously had to be sanitized to remove references to blue movies, omnisexual West Hollywood orgies and blow-by-blow descriptions of hot and heavy encounters at Hollywood parties. (If you want that, watch 1975’s Shampoo instead.) Unfortunately, without all of Haber’s trashy (and addictively readable) accoutrements, The Users is nothing more than a tepid soap opera, glossed over with those slick and deft touches of a Spelling and Cramer production.

But the story behind the story is kind of fun—and I recommend you read the book and try to guess who’s who in Joyce Haber’s roman à clef. 

(Bonus, thanks to Brian in the comments below – Joyce Haber and ex-husband Doug Cramer on an episode of the 70s game show Tattletales!)

This is an entry in the Spellingverse Blogathon, hosted by the beautiful and talented Gill of RealWeegieMidget Reviews. I look forward to reading all your posts about Aaron and Company.