Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story

It is fashionable to look down on made-for-TV movies. But this one is one of the best examples of such flicks. Despite its length, I watched it fully, because the title character was an interesting person. Farrah Fawcett does a good job playing Barbara Hutton, the much-married Woolworth heiress. Cary Grant, who was, at one time, wedded to her is portrayed as a nice guy, who divorces her because of her partying. Hutton was also married to a sadistic Danish count who tries to steal her fortune. She even renounced her American citizenship in order to live with him. Another of her husbands was Count von Kramm, the Nazi-trained tennis player who failed to win at Wimbledon and suffered consequences in Germany. Hutton discovered that he was bisexual, so she divorced him. Barbara Hutton was an ardent socialite, so she neglected her only son. The movie has her telling him that she could not live with him in Arizona because she was not that kind of mother. Later, when someone calls him a "son of a bitch", he simply says "Exactly"! Probably, the most memorable dialogue in the film!

The film follows Hutton around the world. It is interesting to see the film's depiction of exotic countries in the middle part of the twentieth century.

(Reviewed by Sundar Narayan)