This pilot for David Janssen's excellent and under-appreciated HARRY O series was surprisingly disappointing in light of the series that followed. The movie was enjoyable but not exceptional in an era where excellent detective dramas raised the bar high. Janssen's performance does elevate the otherwise standard-issue story and puts it over the top.Andrea Marcovicci, strikingly beautiful, plays Jenny English, only daughter of an aging police officer and longtime friend of Harry O's. She's a dingbat model who we learn is, in David Brock's iconic phrasing, a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty. Jenny is estranged from her father and is desperately seeking a daddy-figure to love. She left her stable marriage to shack up with a sexagenarian retired military man, The Colonel, whose outward bearing belies the rot within (it's revealed he was once court martialed in Vietnam for massacring a village of men, women, and children, which does make the charge of dirty old adulterer pale by comparison).The Colonel soon reaps the whirlwind he sowed. Despite the title, SMILE, JENNY, YOU'RE DEAD, Jenny isn't the target as much as every man the psychotic shutterbug Zalman King believes stands in his way to winning Jenny's heart. Charley English, Jenny's estranged husband whose confession of love is met with cruel callousness, is the first to fall.Torn from the COLUMBO playbook was the scene where the detective shows up while the person of interest is working. I know such scenes allow the viewer to gain some insight into the character, but in real life it would be very vexing for all involved. Harry O shows up and lingers on the sidelines while Harvey Jason as a British fashion photographer snaps a seemingly endless series of photos while Jenny "vogues" for the camera. This scene drags on for an uncomfortably long time. Finally a break, and a switch to some funky music, and while hapless Harvey is reloading his camera Harry slips over and tells Jenny her estranged husband has been murdered. Of course she runs crying to her dressing room. I sympathized with Harvey when he asked an unapologetic Harry, Couldn't you have waited till we were finished? Jenny is relatively unruffled by the deaths, thinking only of herself as only children are prone to do, and while the body of her husband cools in the morgue she flirtatiously suggests Harry O is hitting on her! In an unseemly and surprising turn, perhaps owing to Harry's knowing of her penchant for older men, Harry allows himself to be wooed and teased. I wonder what Harry's old friend and Jenny's father would have thought if he walked in while Harry was in bed holding Jenny, even if it's later stated the night was purely platonic. I also wondered what Harry saw in Jenny that made him fall in love with her. Jenny was self-obsessed, vapid, disloyal, unforgiving, and immoral. Oh, yeah, she was strikingly beautiful, which in Harry's world outweighs a multitude of sins.Perhaps to show Harry is a good guy despite his swingin' seventies amorality, there's the subplot of twelve-year-old Liberty, played with aplomb by a sassy Jodie Foster. Harry looks out for this homeless young urchin and helps gets her shoplifter Mom sprung from jail. Those few scenes underscored the movie's larger theme of fatherlessness and the perils that can befall wives and children when dads go MIA.Jenny wholly lacks the street smarts of Liberty. Her gullibility defies belief when Zalman King approaches Jenny and says he's a photographer who has been secretly taking photos of her. She's not alarmed by this creepy stalker, but instead is flattered and admires his work. Psychosis will out, however, and it isn't long before Zalman King has Jenny perilously perched atop a skyscraper under construction. Dad and Harry O rush to the rescue, King takes the fall, weepy father and daughter reunion with a promise of reconciliation, and the oft-heard "it would never work" speech from Jenny as she "friend zones" a heartbroken Harry. Roll end credits.May-December romances between middle-aged detectives and beautiful young women were a recurring theme on TV in early 1974. SMILE, JENNY, YOU'RE DEAD aired in February and in March the pilot movie for THE ROCKFORD FILES found James Garner and the lovely Lindsay Wagner in a similar entanglement.

Writer Howard Rodman was asked by Warner Brothers to create a TV version of Dirty Harry Callahan, and Harry Orwell is what he came up with! Rodman based Harry on a bit character in Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust". The West character was a tired middle-aged salesman walking up a city hill on a hot afternoon with his jacket thrown over his shoulder and his sleeves rolled up. Harry O was written with Telly Savalas in mind, but Savalas became the peerless Theo Kojak instead.David Janssen reinvented himself as Harry Orwell, giving a superb performance unlike any he had given before. The forty-two year old Janssen's Orwell was completely different from the brash lady-killer private detective Richard Diamond he had played at 26. Janssen's Harry Orwell was as different from his Richard Diamond as Bogart's Philip Marlowe was from his Sam Spade. And Janssen had completely left behind his great signature role of Dr. Richard Kimble.Howard Rodman created a fine character, and Janssen played him to perfection (and made you forget it was created with the great Savalas in mind). This was far different from "O'Hara, U.S. Treasury" (which he had done two years earlier) where Jack Webb apparently asked Janssen to play some version of himself to stultifying effect. (Howard Rodman had co-written two episodes of "Naked City" that Janssen had guest starred on in the early 60's.) The best visual images in the series were Janssen riding on a bus at night (shades of "The Fugitive") and Janssen running on the beach in his bathing suit with his halting, distinctive gait. Janssen created a very appealing classic private eye hero using his great voice for the narration, a unique shambling walk and a brilliantly chosen shabby wardrobe.This second pilot for "Harry O" started the show promisingly. Producer/director Jerry Thorpe ("Kung Fu") did a beautiful job with this movie, hiring a very cool supporting cast including Martin Gabel, Tim McIntire, Zalman King, John Anderson, Clu Gulager, Ellen Weston and Howard Da Silva. But the best casting was of the two women who played opposite Janssen: lovely Andrea Marcovicci in the main plot and young Jodie Foster in the subplot. Both actresses were perfect, and their relationships with Janssen gave this movie an emotional weight that the resulting series didn't have. The scenes between Janssen and Marcovicci and Janssen and Foster were golden.The resulting series was good, but not as great as it should have been. The show started the same year as "The Rockford Files". "Harry O" had a much stronger central character, but the series wasn't as shrewdly done as "Rockford". Harry O should have been set in Los Angeles from the beginning, not in San Diego. The Hollywood connection should have been played up. Harry's "friends on the force" detracted from the show, even though they were good actors. Maybe his friend on the force should have been a woman (Salome Jens). The series needed better recurring characters for Harry to play off of like Roy Huggins/Stephen Cannell gave Rockford. Perhaps Harry should have had two or three ex-wives (Colleen Dewhurst, Diana Muldaur, Julie Sommars) and maybe a cop father (Kent Taylor) and a former show girl/actress mother (Larraine Day or Gypsy Rose Lee). The character of Les, who hero-worshiped Harry, was very good and should have been used more. And they should have found excuses to bring back Marcovicci and Foster. Maybe Marcovicci's character became a lounge singer who the infatuated Orwell stayed in touch with. Maybe Harry should have adopted Jodie.It was apparent that a lot of effort and talent went into this series. But they weren't quite able to find stories to tell that were as compelling as their superb hero.

Man, do I miss "Harry O". I used to love seeing this detective series with David Janssen's gravelly charm as a cynical PI who has to take public transit to solve mysteries! It is completely antithetical to the "Magnum PI" slick cars, slick everything that now permeates the standard TV detective format. This is partially why I love the 1970's era of cop shows. They portrayed the heroes as overworked, underpaid, world-weary, blue-collar joes who are always swimming upstream. There are no super heroics here. In fact, the Harry Orwell character pushed the detective archetype back a rung or two. He shows us that being a PI isn't so bloody marvelous. It's been a long time since "Harry O" disappeared even from filling in a time slot on the late late show, and almost as long since this TV movie (the second pilot to the series, if you will) used to fill programming on lazy Saturday afternoons on my local bands.This time Harry O is after an obsessive nut job photographer played by Zalman King. Since BLUE SUNSHINE is one of my favourite cult movies, I have a soft spot for this interesting actor, even though he isn't the greatest thespian the world has known. Before he went behind the camera to produce the soft core fantasies of TWO MOON JUNCTION or the "Red Shoes Diaries" series, he nonetheless had his share of weird roles. Case in point, this psycho goes around with this huge bow-tie- he more resembles Bozo the clown than a stalker, but King's "edgy" acting gives the character the danger beneath the sheep's clothing.This TV-movie also features an early performance by Jodie Foster in her "tomboy" stage (think ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE) as an urchin who sets up home on Harry O's beach property. In all, SMILE JENNY YOU'RE DEAD is a satisfying thriller with an unusual climax. It is another nice memory of TV-films of the day. Video, please?

"Smile Jenny.." was the second pilot for the "Harry-O" TV series (the first pilot, shown almost a year earlier was "Harry-O: Such Dust as Dreams are Made On"), and convinced ABC to pick up Harry-O as weekly show. A lot of economies were taken on this 2nd outing; less location shooting at the north Santa Monica (its funny the producers then set the show for most of the first season in San Diego, and then moved it back to LA for the last 6 first season episodes, and all of the second season) beach hut, fewer "name" guest stars, save Clu Gallagher (who seemed to pop up everywhere in the 70's), and a simple plot: keeping a young woman alive. This 2nd pilot was far inferior to the first, as it really doesn't delve into Harry's character (he was a likeable curmundgeon in the first pilot, as well as the show) to the degree of the first movie. This is more of a simple good guy-bad guy story. That being said, it must have done something to change the minds of ABC exec's, who then green-lited the show (truely the best TV PI show ever) which appeared in the fall of '74, and ran until August '76.