r
T
LI
Love Hurts
Scarsdale diet doc's murder receives expert HBO treatment.
I Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
hen Dr. Herman "Hy"
Tarnower was shot to
death by longtime
girlfriend Jean Harris in his
Westchester County home in
1980, the newspapers fed off the
story for months.
The Jewish internist-cardiolo-
gist was the best-selling author
of The Complete Scarsdale
Medical Diet and a minor
celebrity. The accused wasn't
trailer trash either, but the head-
mistress of a hoity-toity girls
prep school outside of
Washington, D.C.
The steady stream of lurid,
wacky details that surfaced
before and during Harris' trial
depicted their 14-year relation-
ship as the stuff of melodrama
from beginning to end. It also
allowed for contrasting views of
the defendant: Was Harris a jeal-
ous lover who killed Tarnower in
cold blood or a pathetically
deranged figure who intended to
commit suicide in her ex's bed-
room and wound up shooting
him by accident during a strug-
gle?
This tale of tragic obsession is
tailor-made for the standard-
issue true-crime movie that
invites viewers to wallow vicari-
ously in sordid scenes then raps
W
their knuckles
Ivith smarmy
moralizing. But
writer-director
Phyllis Nagy's slyly
delicious Mrs.
Harris, which pre-
mieres 8 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 25,
on HBO, employs a
post-feminist
slant, an ironic
soundtrack of pop
love songs and
some slashing
funny one-liners to
achieve something
far more complex
and provocative.
American soci-
ety transmogri-
fied in the
1960s.
She'd been
sharp enough
to graduate
from Smith
with honors
and strong
enough to leave
a staid,
unimaginative
husband and
raise their sons
Sir Ben Kingsley as Dr. Herman Tarnower and Annette Bening
alone. But she
as Jean Harris in HBO's Mrs. Harris
was also tradi-
tional enough to
crave an old-
We realize that we've just seen
fashioned monogamous relation-
Harris' version of what happened
Point Of View
ship, which Herman Tarnower
that night, and we soon learn
The film begins with Jean Harris
never signed on for.
that she's not the most reliable
— brilliantly played by Annette
narrator. As the movie recounts
Bening, who covers a stunning
Reptilian Charm
their
affair in flashback — inter- As portrayed with reptilian
emotional landscape from buoy-
cut with scenes from the trial —
ant to haggard, from loving to
charm by Sir Ben Kingsley, the
Harris quarrels with Tarnower
loony — arriving at Hy
doctor is a self-made, self-satis-
more times than you can count.
Tarnower's house in the middle
fied success and unrepentant
You could conclude from this
of a March thunderstorm, and
womanizer. A Brooklyn-born Jew,
and Harris' other divergences
proceeds to depict the events
Tarnower is fond of calling him-
from reality that she maintained
that led to his death.
self a "country doctor with a city
a romantic, idealized view of the
As he bleeds in his bed, she
clientele:' but everything from his
relationship that was, in fact,
recounts in bleary voiceover,"I
enormous Cadillac to his room
looked at his face and he looked at delusional. But she was smart,
full of big-game trophies puts the
pragmatic and independent, and
me, and I guess we were both in a
lie to his mock-humble act.
state of shock over how something her emotional dependence on
Kingsley, who played shrewd
ugly and sad could have happened Tarnower perplexes even her best but powerless Jewish characters
friend.
between two people who didn't
in Schindler's List, The Diary of
It's as if Harris was ship-
argue — except over the use of
Anne Frank and Oliver Twist, rev-
wrecked in no-man's-land when
the subjunctive"
els in Tarnower's self-assurance
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Come experience
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and selfishness.
Tarnower only backs down in
the presence of his sister, a
German Jew of rigid bearing
(played by Jewish actress Cloris
Leachman) who has no use for
his divorced, non-Jewish school-
teacher paramour. (Also por-
trayed in the film, by Ellen
Burstyn, is Tarnower's ex-lover
Gerda Stedman, an elegant
German Jew in her late 60s.)
By the end of the endlessly
intriguing Mrs. Harris, which is
inspired by the late Jewish jour-
nalist Shana Alexander's book
Very Much a Lady, we're left to
interpret what really happened in
this twisted romance — and the
night it ended.
Tarnower's brutal honesty and
pathological lack of compassion,
mixed with endless prescriptions
for speed and sleeping pills, cer-
tainly contributed to Harris
becoming unmoored.
But Harris was undeniably a
willing participant. As she
remarked to her closest friend,
"Cruelty isn't a crime. Boredom
is!" ❑
Mrs. Harris premieres 8
p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25, on
HBO. Check your local
cable listings for additional
broadcasts.
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