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Dina Merrill, who loves him, tells him it will happen. Story #2: Leslie Nielsen is a concert pianist, or at least wants to be. When Lesley sees he has accidentally dropped it, she has her own agenda that may hurt all of them. He then winds up going back to her, when he can't see a real life with children with Lesley. Oh, John! While on his business trip and rendezvousing with Lesley, he writes a 'Dear John' letter to Jane, but never mailed it. He is going on a business trip, but when he gets on the plane, we see him hold hands with the lady already sitting there, Lesley Ann Warren. Story #1: We see married couple John Forsythe and wife Jane Powell.

#MAILPLANE REVEW MOVIE#

'The Letters,' this 1973 TV movie is told in three stories which have a common factor – they all received a letter a year late due to the carrier plane crashing. movies that today would end up automatically on Lifetime, and to see so much Hollywood royalty in one 75 minute movie makes it even a lot more fun than any 'Love Boat' or 'Fantasy Island' would do a decade later. This is one of those fun 'so bad it's good!' T.V. Stanwyck shows she still has the power to dominate every scene she is in, and Merrill shows she's a tiger in kitten fur who really has what it takes when she gets the chance. The characters here are all a bit amoral, and the payoff is classic in the old Warner Brothers/MGM women's film tradition. Stanwyck is the domineering sister who covets Merrill's beau, and seeing method in this powerful woman's madness, Nielsen chooses money over love, much to his detriment. While the other two segments are notable for being very 'domestic', the third segment I mention is very much in tuned with what Spelling would do years later on 'Dynasty' and his other prime-time soaps.

However, the best segment is the Stanwyck/Merrill pairing as a couple of sisters who fight over the same man (Leslie Nielsen, and surely, I AM serious!) and the devious methods conductor Nielsen utilizes to get his hands on a fortune.

The Jane Powell/John Forsythe film involves revelations concerning infidelity, while the Ida Lupino segment concerns an ultra possessive mother. The divas are MGM musical star Jane Powell, drama queens Barbara Stanwyck and Ida Lupino and one of the heirs to the Barbara Hutton estate, the gorgeous Dina Merrill. This is a film where the narrator is a postman (Henry Jones of 'The Bad Seed' and TV's 'Phyllis' fame) who delivers the missing correspondence that reveals the truths about the dramas of the first 3/4 of the rather short film.

movie (rumored to be a potential anthology series) is an all-star 'Love Boat' where the title really could be 'mail plane', tragically crashing and delaying the delivery of important letters for years. It was well written, had an interesting cast and was quite original. One story is about an unfaithful husband, another about a slimy pianist who murders his ancient wife and the final about a man who is killed on the way to doing the right thing and straighten up his life! I was surprised how touching some of the stories were (particularly the first and third) and in hindsight I would have liked to have seen more. The film has a cast of various A and B list stars including the likes of John Forsythe, Barbara Stanwyck, Dina Merrill, Ida Lupino and many others. In each story, you see the story up until the letter is written.then a break to show the plane crash.and then later the rest of the story once the letter arrives. While you could argue that the Postal Service sucks, this is explained away by a bag of mail being on a plane that crashed in the mountains.and the missing sack of mail was only just discovered. You see three separate stories that are all tied together by a common thread.a letter which was sent but not delivered for a year.

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'The Letters' is an interesting idea for a film and apparently was a pilot for a series that never came to be.

Mailplane revew