STAR WAGON, THE (TV)
Summary
This made-for-television science-fiction drama film is an adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's 1937 play about a pair of eccentric inventors who take drastic measures to change their lives. Act I begins in 1932 as middle-aged Martha Minch loses patience yet again with irritating Hanus Wicks, her husband Stephen's longtime close friend and their perennial boarder. She complains that Steve, an underpaid laboratory worker who's never had the "gumption" to demand a raise, has been overly loyal to his odd pal ever since Hanus saved him from drowning 25 years earlier. She laments that he should have married Hallie Arlington, now his boss Charles Duffy's wife, and she should've married friend Paul Reiger, but Steve swears that his latest secret invention will change their unhappy lives forever.
At the factory, colleagues Ripple and Park observe Hanus and Steve's bizarre contraption, which observant cleaning woman Angela describes as "a safe." Duffy, annoyed with the pair's perpetual lateness, is baffled to spot the strange device that has distracted them from their work in rubber analysis, and when they arrive, Duffy criticizes Steve's recent work, complaining that he actually did too well in improving the formula used in creating their automobile tires, meaning that they will sell fewer products. Steve protests that it's "not honest" to sell inferior products in order to make more money, and when Duffy demands answers about the device, Steve struggles to explain that time isn't linear and that their "star-wagon" allows a person to move back and forth through time, like "canal boats." Exasperated, Duffy fires them both and orders the star-wagon scrapped for parts, and a desperate Steve enlists the help of two lowlife thieves and breaks into the factory at night with Hanus to steal his device back. When the thugs guess that there are valuable items in the "safe" and aggressively demand their share, Steve panics and instructs Hanus to "throw the switch" – and the two are then escorted back to July 3, 1902.
Hanus and Steve are delighted to find their 30-years-younger selves in the bicycle shop that preceded the factory's construction, and Steve vows to "change everything" for the better. Younger Martha arrives, clad in scandalous "bloomers," and she and Steve flirt, though she seems to think he'll likely marry Hallie. Hallie herself stops by with her father, Sheriff Arlington, who is impressed by Steve's handmade automobile. After a test drive, Arlington requests to buy the car, and its patent, for $500, suggesting that they come up with a "combination" in which Steve puts the money back into Arlington's budding business and eventually marries Hallie. Hanus, however, wonders if they shouldn't consider "a different direction."
In Act II, Martha, Hallie, Steve and Hanus attend choir practice, presided over by the stern and prudish widow Mrs. Rutledge. Afterwards, Paul Reiger tries to invite Martha out for ice cream with the others, but she remains behind with Steve, and their flirtation deepens as they sing together. Later, Mrs. Rutledge takes her students – and an unwelcome Hanus – on a picnic and attempts to remind them of the social "rules of decorum," but they soon break off into groups to swim and romance one another. Steve observes Martha's nervousness around him and realizes he may end up marrying her "again," and he asks Hanus to repair the star-wagon to keep them from making the same mistakes a second time. On the way back to the bike shop, Hanus encounters a distressed and deeply lonely Mrs. Rutledge, while elsewhere Steve and Martha declare confirm their significant interest in one another and Steve decides to use Arlington's $500 to start their married life together, rather than to make a lucrative professional investment. A strange darkness then falls, however, and Steve realizes that Hanus' work on the star-wagon is altering their present – and future.
Steve finds himself suddenly drowning in the river, as he almost did in his original past, and in a strange astral plane between realities, a mysterious "herb woman" – who resembles Angela – appears to him and offers a cryptic warning, suggesting that his fate is inevitable and his apparent desires will be both his "punishment and his reward." Steve returns to the present and is rescued from drowning by Hanus, again, though a terrified Hallie admits that she jestingly pushed him into the river and suggests that she'll "have to marry him" as a result. Mrs. Rutledge, at first scandalized by their semi-dressed, bedraggled appearances, is immediately delighted to hear that Hallie and Steve are suddenly engaged, though Martha is understandably shocked and hurt. Once alone, Steve and Hanus agree that they've now found a "different direction" for their lives after all.
Act II commences several years later at Steve and Hallie's grand marital home, where Hanus, now married to the former Mrs. Rutledge, spends extensive amounts of time, much to Hallie's chagrin. Both marriages are clearly unhappy, with Hallie implied to be cheating on Steve with Duffy. Duffy, arriving with Martha and Paul, also married, demands that Hanus give up the company stock that was put in his name solely for tax purposes, but Hanus declares that he's not willing to cheat their unwitting investors out of $20 million. Duffy threatens to have him declared "crazy" with Mrs. Wicks' support, but Hanus capitulates only when a dejected Steve finally "washes his hands of him," telling him that there's no point in having morals in an unjust world. Martha sadly observes that Steve has become "bitter and cruel," though he notes with irony that she, in another reality, was the one who prompted him to marry Hallie.
Realizing that their meddling actually made their lives worse, Hanus and Steve decide to use the star-wagon to return to their original lives, before they ever traveled through time. Once there, Hanus is delighted to find himself a bachelor once again, and as Steve makes amends with Martha, Duffy barges in and accuses him of stealing not only the "safe" but also the notecards containing his important rubber analysis. Aware that he needs his expertise, Duffy offers to make Steve a partner, but Steve, now far more confident, declares himself through with "taking orders." He compromises for a position as a consulting engineer alongside Hanus, and Duffy accepts. Hanus and Steve then show Martha the star-wagon – which she recalls seeing at the bicycle shop many years ago – but Steve decides that it can't be mass-marketed for public use, as people cannot truly change their past lives, and concludes that the invention is just "a better way of remembering things." Now finally happy together, Steve and Martha ponder buying a piano and returning to their long-ago shared love of music. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS
- DATE: November 30, 1999 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 2:26:28
- COLOR/B&W: B&W
- CATALOG ID: B:58814
- GENRE: Drama, fantasy/science fiction
- SUBJECT HEADING: Drama, fantasy/science fiction; Inventions/Inventors; Time travel; Romance
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV, 1966
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Karl Genus … Producer, Director
- Maxwell Anderson … Writer
- Harriet Pemstein … Associate Producer
- José Serebier … Music by
- Orson Bean … Cast, Stephen Minch
- Eileen Brennan … Cast, Hallie Arlington
- Dustin Hoffman … Cast, Hanus Wicks
- Jo Hurt … Cast, Mrs. Rutledge
- Joan Lorring … Cast, Martha Minch
- Charles MacPhee … Cast, Park
- Ed Zimmerman … Cast, Charles Duffy
- Richard Castellano … Cast, Burly Burglar
- Chet Doherty … Cast, Ripple
- Arthur Hughes … Cast, Misty
- Marian Seldes … Cast, Angela
- Hal Burdick … Cast, Sheriff Arlington
- Ben Yaffee … Cast
- Macintyre Dixon … Cast
- Shelly Gale … Cast
- Russell Horton … Cast
- Ian Jenkins … Cast
- Beverly Luckenbach … Cast