TV SHOW OF THE DAY: "THE HOLDOUT" (1962)

Unbridled capitalism is our most
important product.

 If you ever had the desire to see Groucho Marx and Dennis Hopper play opposite each other -- and don't tell me you haven't -- you are in luck! Thanks to the good folks at General Electric Theater (and your genial host Ronald Reagan), that dream team existed one evening in 1962. 

And after watching it, you'll have no doubt as to why Hopper eventually wound up an alcoholic acid/coke head who went into hiding in the Mexican desert before eventually coming to his senses two decades later. 

As for Groucho... well, he needed something to do after ending You Bet Your Life a year earlier.

Before continuing, I confess that I found "The Holdout" so ordinary a half-hour that I can't remember the names of any of the characters. So you'll have to be content with nouns instead.

One of these things is not like the other.
I'm just not sure which.

The story is equally simple. Two clean-cut college students want to get married. Everybody's thrilled except the girl's father (Groucho), who wants them to wait until the boy graduates the following year. He believes it would be wiser for the boy to work rather than rely on the allowance he receives from his parents; otherwise, his folks will gradually get more involved in the young couple's lives. By the closing credits, the boy realizes his future father-in-law is correct. Champagne and big smiles all around!

Sporting a toupee, dyed moustache, and a pipe instead of cigar, Groucho plays it straight for the first and last time in his career. He's OK, but his old-school New York accent, still strong after over three decades in Hollywood, instantly makes you think COMEDY. (He gets to make a wisecrack about Nikita Khrushchev as if a sop to his fans.)

Your expectations can't be helped. I mean, Groucho had been known for playing a particular kind of character (even as a quiz show host) for roughly 50 years by the time of "The Holdout". There's one scene, when rising from a couch and walking across the room, where he appears to start the classic Groucho walk before catching himself. Some habits are hard to break.

Fred Clark shows him how it's done.

Groucho is completely overshadowed by co-star Fred Clark as the boy's father in
their two scenes together.  Clark, a first-class character actor who seemed to work every day of his adult life, takes hold of his role like a cowboy on his favorite horse. Groucho, on the other hand, is still Groucho, even if his familiar inflections have been taken down a couple of notches.

Never have I posed with my daughter
like this.

The more-or-less thankless role of the daughter is played by Brooke Hayward. Considering she was married to Dennis Hopper -- and both attended the Actors School in New York -- you'd think she would have had a little more spark in her scenes with the guy she's supposed to be in love with. 

The most emotion Hayward actually shows is with her bullheaded father, who, without saying so explicitly, is afraid that she'll get pregnant without a ring on her finger, yet still is against the marriage. Groucho must have forgotten the same thing happened to his girlfriend in real life roughly 35 years earlier. C'mon, Groucho, good for the goose and all that. 

Then there's Dennis Hopper, whose performances often promise fireworks, or at least a Roman candle. And the idea of Blue Velvet's Frank Booth going one-on-one with Duck Soup's Rufus T. Firefly makes one's mouth water with anticipation.

Hopper's already starting to look crazy.

Well, you'll remained parched, for in "The Holdout", Hopper, to my eyes, is no different from any 20-something actor kicking around TV at the time. (He had been blacklisted from movies. That's what happens when you respond to Harry Cohn's offer of a contract at Columbia Pictures by literally spitting in his face). 

Maybe I'm expecting too much. It could be that Hopper, who worshipped the be-real style of James Dean, is simply playing his role as a shy 20 year-old who wants only to win the approval of his future father-in-law. If so, he succeeds -- even if it is boring. 

A Night at the Family Quarrel.

As a drama, then, "The Holdout" kind of plays like a "very special episode" of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, only without Ricky's number at the end. It seems to acknowledge that a new generation has its own ideas of how to live (and act), while at the same time clinging to a style that was fast becoming archaic. Check out Hopper's performance on Naked City the same year, playing a psychopathic rich kid with an Oedipus complex, and you can see where he was headed. 

A good idea on (rolling) paper.

Six years later, Groucho made his own stab at the new Hollywood in Otto Preminger's impressively dreadful acid-drenched counter-culture comedy Skidoo, playing a mobster-turned-hippie pot-smoker. He should have remained a holdout instead.

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