Shelley Long should have become a movie star with ‘Troop Beverly Hills’

https://aseatintheaisle.wordpress.com/2020/07/16/shelley-long-should-have-become-a-movie-star-with-troop-beverly-hills/

Shelley Long was at an interesting and exciting moment in her career when she starred in Troop Beverly Hills. Just a couple years earlier, she left Cheers, her sitcom home for five seasons. She earned an Emmy for her portrayal of the snooty, erudite waitress Diane Chambers, who spent her five years on the show fending off the advances of bar tender, Sam Malone (Ted Danson). Danson and Long shared a crackling chemistry and the brilliant writing on the show made Sam and Diane the Bogie and Bacall of the 1980s. Long was a first among equals, standing out with an insightful and carefully-constructed performance, one that stood amidst an ensemble of genius character actors. Long’s comedic persona – prissy, controlled, snobby – was firmly formed, and she became a comedy institution at a young age.

Her breakout success on Cheers meant Long had an opportunity to become a movie star, as well. Whilst on the show, she made a series of films – all pleasant 80s comedies that were solid hits, some like Money Pit, co-starring Tom Hanks and Outrageous Fortune, co-starring Bette Midler, managed to be charming, but none overshadowed her brilliant work on television. As a movie star, Long seemed to aim for a career like fellow funny women Goldie Hawn or Diane Keaton: starring in moderately budgeted comedies that were written around her comedic persona.

Despite being a relatively conservative decade with fewer opportunities for women in the film industry than today, the 1980s were comparatively hospitable for female movie stars, including female comedy stars. Harking back to the days of classic Hollywood, the 1980s saw film projects created specifically for talents like Melanie Griffith, Jessica Lange, Kathleen Turner, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, and the aforementioned Hawn, Midler, and Keaton. Though comedy stars like Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, and Steve Martin dominated the box office, there were opportunities for female comedy stars like Hawn, Midler, or Goldberg to get their projects made, as well. Because Long was seeing her star rise as Cheers’ success grew, it seemed only natural that she would also find success.

And looking back at Long’s fellow TV comediennes, there was some precedence for a small screen star to find success in the big screen. Lucille Ball, the queen of TV comedy found success after I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show with Yours, Mine, Ours (1968) and Mary Tyler Moore found critical acclaim, playing against type, earning an Oscar nomination for her role as a chilly, neglecting mother in Robert Redford’s family drama Ordinary People (1980) Though Ball, Moore, and Long all shared a common challenge in trying for film stardom: audiences become accustomed to seeing them play a certain role, and therefore it becomes difficult for audiences to accept them in other roles. Like Moore and Ball, Long was linked to a classic show and a strong character that fells molded to her comedic personality, which would make it harder for audiences to move past seeing their favourite TV character on the big screen playing somebody else.

Troop Beverly Hills is a movie that can only be made in the 1980s. It owes its aesthetic and values to the Reagan-era of yuppies, jokes about despotic dictators, and a character that is an parodic amalgam of Jackie Collins and Danielle Steele. Besides Long, the cast is studded with 80s figures like future Coach star Craig T. Nelson, SNL alumna Mary Gross, Three’s Company vet Audra Lindley, and future TV 90s TV stars Kellie Martin and Tori Spelling, as well as future indie rocker, Jenny Lewis (who logged an impressively prodigious career as a child star in the 80s). The cameos feel like the call sheet for The Hollywood Squares: Robin Leach, Pia Zadora, Ted McGinley, and Dr Joyce Brothers, among others.

But Long was the center of the story. The script was written by SNL writers Margaret Oberman and Pamela Norris, the latter of whom also cut her teeth on other 80s artifacts Remingston Steele, Miami Vice, and Gimme a Break!. The film’s fish-out-of-water tale was based, in part, by the film’s producer, Ava Ostern Fries, who, like Phyllis, was the leader of her daughter’s troop. It’s a film that at once celebrates the excess of 80s wealth but lampoons it. We’re meant to laugh at the spoiled princesses of Beverly Hills, but Long and her young co-stars imbue the character with such good-natured humor and charm, they end up being endearing and appealing, even when we see them cynically assess the value of diamonds at a jewelry store. It’s definitely an 80s cartoon of wealth and privilege, blithely celebrating the wealth without examining income inequality.