JEAN Harris died for our sins. Yes, it’s true.
The woman who shot and killed “The Scarsdale Diet” doc, Herman “Hy” Tarnower, and may have even ghosted his best-selling book, did what women the world over have always fantasized about doing – finally knocking off their own cheating, bald, show-off yutzes.
That’s not to say that Harris, the snooty headmistress, wasn’t herself a couple of sheets short of a fully made bed, but still.
Look, you’d have to be half-nuts to put up with that unattractive showoff who publicly fancied himself a lady-killer – a man, speaking of “killers,” who sported a roomful of his “kills” from various safaris.
Twenty-five years after the case that galvanized a nation, HBO has come up with a TV-movie version of the case, “Mrs. Harris,” which is an almost satirical look at the murder.
And to prove my point that this was a case that every woman (with the possible exception of Mother Theresa and one or two super models) could relate to, it was conceived, written and directed by Phyllis Nagy – a London-based playwright who usually writes for London’s Royal Court Theater and does things like translate Chekov.
Neither Mother Theresa nor a supermodel, Phyllis obviously knows that Jean Harris is everywoman.
While Harris was always what fashionistas might call “stout,” she’s played flawlessly nonetheless by wafer-thin Annette Bening. Show-off-and-much-married Hy is brought back to life by Ben Kingsley.
The rest of the cast is breathtakingly good, too. Ellen Burstyn, who starred in the 1981 TV movie based on the case, shows up here in a cameo as a Hy-ex; Cloris Leachman is his sister, Pear; Mary McDonnell is his former neighbor; Frances Fisher does a bang-up job as Jean’s best pal; and Chloe Sevigny is Lynne Tryforos, the younger woman Hy fell for (and Harris killed over).
The movie takes us from the ill-fated (not “ill-fatted”) night when Jean, loony with love, drove five hours from the Madiera School in D.C. to Hy’s home in Purchase, N.Y.
Unable to take “Get lost” for an answer, she went to Hy’s house gunning for bear, perhaps thinking that the next trophy head in Hy’s den would be his own. She says she went there to kill herself, but she shot him by mistake – several times – when he tried to disarm her.
The prosecution showed otherwise. Her version is the gun only went off in his direction – while every time she went to pull the trigger with the gun’s muzzle at her own temple, it came up with an empty chamber. Talk about bad luck!
Since I myself am a sucker for a true-crime cheesefest, I was loving this movie until I was rudely reminded by my friend Denise that, “This is neither good sleaze nor serious true crime! It’s half a satire, and half a true crime movie!”
Damn! Just when I was enjoying myself so much and all! Me? I’ll watch it several more times.
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“Mrs. Harris”
[** 1/2] (Two and one-half stars)
Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO