Welcome to "Saturday Night of the Movies."
I'm your host, Glenn Holland.
Tonight's movie is the 1987 romantic comedy, "Baby Boom," directed by Charles Shyer.
He wrote the screenplay with his wife at the time, Nancy Meyers, who also co-produced with Bruce A.
Block.
"Baby Boom" stars Diane Keaton, Harold Ramis, Sam Wanamaker, and Sam Shepard, with support from James Spader, Pat Hingle, and Britt Leach.
J.C. Wiatt is a woman with an impressive resume, including degrees from Harvard and Yale, and a place at a New York firm as a management consultant, known as the "Tiger Lady."
In her late thirties, she's at the top of her profession, in part because she is fully dedicated to her work.
She shares an apartment with an investment banker, Steven, who is just as devoted to his job as she is to hers.
They enjoy all the perks of successful professional life in Manhattan and are content to do so with no plans for marriage or children.
J.C.'s boss, Fritz, is particularly pleased with her work and plans to have her made a partner, provided she can win over a prospective new client, Hughes Larrabee, owner of a grocery company called "The Food Chain."
One evening, out of the blue, J.C. receives a telephone call informing her that a distant cousin, who lives in the United Kingdom, has died and left her a bequest.
Unfortunately, the connection is bad, and the call ends before she can find out what the bequest is.
All she knows is that she has to meet an emissary at the airport to receive it.
She meets the plane on the way to a luncheon meeting with Larrabee and finds, to her surprise, that her late cousin's bequest is his orphaned 18 month old daughter, Elizabeth.
Handed the child and her few belongings, J.C. has no choice but to take Elizabeth along to her meeting with Larrabee, and, gradually, the seriousness of her new situation begins to dawn on her.
She must either find someone to adopt Elizabeth or take on a responsibility for the child herself and possibly bring an end to her high-powered career and the high-end Manhattan lifestyle she had envisioned for herself.
Screenwriters Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer saw "Baby Boom" as an updated version of earlier films, like 1942's "Woman of the Year," with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, or 1939's "Bachelor Mother," with Ginger Rogers and David Niven.
Myers said, "Our movie is about someone "who never planned on motherhood.
"10 years ago, "Baby Boom" would've probably starred a man, "because, not until recently, "with the great female drive towards careerism and success, "would it be believable "that a woman could be so ill-prepared for motherhood."
That may be so, but "Baby Boom" was one of several films released in the eighties that dealt with a, sort of, personal and professional havoc a baby might create.
Some involved unwed teen mothers, like 1988's "For Keeps," with Molly Ringwald and 1989's "Immediate Family," with Glenn Close, James Woods, and Mary Stuart Masterson.
In comedies, the clueless caregiver was still usually a man, like Michael Keaton's hapless father of three in 1983's "Mr.
Mom," or it could be a group of men, as in 1987's "Three Men and a Baby," and 1990's "Three Men and a Little Lady," both starring Tom Selek, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson.
The trend continued with 1989's "Look Who's Talking," with Kirstie Alley and John Travolta.
But by then, the comedic focus had changed to the inner monologues of the baby, voiced by Bruce Willis.
A sequel, "Look Who's Talking Too," appeared the following year, in 1990.
But after that, baby comedies seemed to fall out of fashion.
"Baby Boom" is very much a product of its specific moment in history.
An introductory voiceover by NBC journalist, Linda Ellerbee, informs us of the important place women held in the working world in the mid-eighties, over scenes of professional women walking purposefully through the streets of Manhattan.
J.C. Wiatt's drive reflects her attempt to break through the glass ceiling at her company while struggling, like many other women of the time, to find and maintain the proper balance between her professional life and her personal life.
The question of whether it's possible to have it all, however one might define that term, is explicitly posed by Fritz, J.C's boss, and the rest of the film offers one possible answer to that question.
When "Baby Boom" debuted, the advertisement called it, "An unexpected comedy."
Although Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" said, "It isn't so much more than a glorified sitcom, but it's funny and it's liable to hit home."
Critics, however they may have felt about the movie as a whole, were nearly unanimous in their praise for Diane Keaton's performance as J.C. Wiatt.
Writing in "The New Yorker," Pauline Kael called it, "A glorious comedy performance.
Keaton is smashing.
The tiger ladies having all this drive is played for farce and Keaton keeps you alert to every shade of pride and panic the character feels.
She's an ultra-feminine executive, a wide-eyed dreamer with a breathless dizziness."
Many critics were struck by the contrast in Keaton's role and appearance from her star making turn in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," 10 years before.
Eleanor Quinn wrote for Turner Classic Movies in 2003, "'Baby Boom' featured Keaton in a whole new look with Armani suits and Donna Karen skirts.
Shyer, Meyers, and costume designer Susan Becker used classic thirties and forties films as their model."
Quinn quoted producer and co screenwriter Nancy Meyers who said, "I always loved how Ros Russell and Katharine Hepburn portrayed working women.
They wore wonderfully tailored suits and always carried envelope bags under their arm as they walk through their offices dishing out orders."
"Los Angeles Times" critic, Kevin Thomas saw the influence of earlier films in the genetics of the comedy as well.
He said, "The screenwriters were not afraid to be sophisticated and screw-ballish in the best thirties tradition, and they know just how far to exaggerate for laughs without leaving touch with reality entirely or destroying sentiment.
The humor in "Baby Boom" is sharp without being heartless."
Roger Ebert focused on a key element of the film's appeal in a review for "The Chicago Sun-Times."
"'Baby Boom' makes no effort to show us real life," he wrote.
"It is a fantasy about mothers, and babies, and sweetness, and love with just enough wicked comedy to give it an edge."
The divorce from real life is essential to the core of the movie's plot and crucial to the way its story develops.
As Derek Armstrong noted in retrospective, the tiger-like persona, Diane Keaton assumes in the office quickly crumbles into scatty panic when she's faced with adversity.
Most notably, when she buys a lemon of a house in Vermont and must confront its myriad problems while trying to stay afloat financially.
The movie falls into two distinct parts.
The first part is set in Manhattan where J.C. is a successful businesswoman, and then suddenly a hapless adoptive mother trying her best to deal with the demands of both her job and her infant daughter, Elizabeth.
The second part is set in rural Vermont where J.C.'s problems with Elizabeth essentially disappear in favor of a fish out of water, romantic comedy of a sort long familiar to American moviegoers.
The same plot can still be found in a simpler form in any number of Hallmark movies today.
An ending that at first appears to offer some reconciliation between the J.C. of the Manhattan story, and the more self-realized J.C. of the Vermont story is in fact a resolution in favor of the new improved Vermont version.
When J.C. experiences her amazingly sudden success with the Country Baby product she whipped up in her kitchen, she proves to her former colleagues as well as to herself that she can be a success as both a mother and an entrepreneur.
The fantasy element in "Baby Boom," something the audience readily accepts and doesn't question is certainly part of the film's appeal.
As Armstrong points out, "At its release, "Baby Boom" was seen as a timely spotlight on the dilemma facing women as they began breaking the glass ceiling, whether to channel all their resources towards career success or compromise their upward mobility by having children.
The issue and its execution clearly interested audiences turning the film into a minor hit."
The screenwriters Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer said, "'Baby Boom' was intended to depict the increasing prejudice women face today where they're presented with two stereotyped roles, the sweet caregiver or the self-reliant businesswoman."
They also said, "The film was intended in some small way to begin to expose and break down that outdated dichotomy."
Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."
I'm Glenn Holland.
Goodnight.
