Ginger in the Morning

I was hoping to watch a love story (as the tagline of the movie suggests), but....most of the screen time is spent in the silly interactions between the Markham character and his drunken friend. Although the latter is quite funny in the first scene where he appears, then his presence becomes tiresome and annoying, as well as the character of his wife. However, the movie is not too terrible thanks to Spacek's performance, and the ending scene was great and moving.

The only movie directed by TV director, Gordon Wiles, features the lovely Sissy Spacek, who – although she plays Ginger, the film's main character – is billed fourth, would you believe, even though, as I say, she plays the title role – and plays it with charm, charisma and believability too – qualities that are not always present in the performances delivered by Monte Markham (who enjoys first billing), Susan Oliver (billed second, even though she has only a small role) and Mark Miller (a prolific but second-string TV actor who has made only seven or eight movies to date). The movie itself is actually not all that interesting. The plot is predictable and yet it tends to wander. In fact, Miller's character was obviously designed to help spin it out. Nevertheless, hearty Slim Pickens is on hand to liven up the last reel and it all comes to a predictable but happy conclusion. Available on an excellent Mill Creek DVD.

Cutesy drama, almost unendurably dated--and with clichéd characters and dialogue to boot--features a young Sissy Spacek as a health-conscious, free-spirited woman, a hippie folk singer hitchhiking with her guitar across the country; she gets a ride from Monte Markham, a just-divorced businessman who's been advised to find himself a new girl to forget the old one. There are some surprisingly fine shots by cinematographer William K. Jurgensen of Spacek thumbing it on the road, but her relationship with Markham is pure cookie-cutter. Second-feature caught Spacek just before her career was about to take off, though this is one title she'd probably like to erase from her resume. Her acting is likable enough, but her character Ginger is nothing more than a lighter version of the hitchhiker Laurie Heineman played in "Save the Tiger"--in other words, a refugee from a TV sitcom or movie-of-the-week. *1/2 from ****

Oh man, that early 70's generation gap. Ginger (Sissy Spacek in her first starring role) is an attractive young hitchhiker who shacks up with a lonely, middle-aged ad guy (Monte Markham, We Are Still Here) who just got divorced. Can he learn from her free spirit? Will she break him out of his shell? Will his friends act like jerks? Yes. Yes. Yes. Mark Miller from Please Don't Eat the Daisies, David Doyle (Bosley from Charlie's Angels) and Fred Ward - yes, Remo Williams - are all in this. This is an early version of the manic pixie dream girl trope. Watch it and think about 1974, a time when AIDS was a myth and the only pandemic we were worried about were killer bees.

Joe Maroney (Monte Markham), divorced for three months, is driving in New Mexico from Albuquerque to his home in Santa Fe when he picks up a hitchhiking free spirit, Ginger Brown, played by Sissy Spacek, and the two subsequently become romantically absorbed with each other as New Year's Eve nears, whereupon Joe's former Army comrade Charley (Mark Miller) and, coincidentally, Charley's former wife Sugar (Susan Oliver) join them with many complications as the product. Hoydenish Spacek is appealing and brings life to scriptor/producer Miller's lines, but bland Markham's metabolic rate seems to be constant throughout and Oliver, a talented actress, is given loathsome dialogue and exaggerates it, without doubt to her satisfaction, while the direction is listless and the screenplay lacks imagination, with only Spacek's reactions, although not always precisely matching her circumstances, shining through this frippery.

This early work starring Sissy Spacek is not a bad period piece. Spacek was 25 when she starred in this movie as a hitchhiker who falls for a middle aged businessman who picks her up. Even at this early age, you can tell that Spacek knows her craft and gives a deeper performance than her older costars. While there are some campy moments and forced dialog, I found that the low-budget film's unvarnished feel brought back a real sense of life in the early 1970s. There is a scene where the two male costars get drunk, and it really is a realistic portrayal of having fun while you are drunk! There are some funny moments, and it's far from a bomb. I purchased the DVD for $1 at my local dollar store, and felt it was worth at least that!