Did This Movie Inspire Shirley Conran To Write "Lace???????????????????"

                                                 There is this sketch, on "The Carol Burnett Show," where Eunice decides to walk out on Ed, because he has been seen visiting a massage parlor!!!!  A lickee  lickee joint in Raytown, Missouri?  Hard to believe.  Bet it was several towns over.

                                                    Anyway, when Eunice arrives, distraught, her mother is distracted by the movie she has been watching.  A movie where it is about to be revealed which of three women is the mother of this child, who survived a plane crash.

                                                      Eunice spoils it for her, telling her who the mother is.  I won't spoil it for you, though, if you watch the sketch, you will find out.  Better to wait and see the movie.

                                                       What I am getting at here, is that, all this time, I thought this movie, whose title is never mentioned, was fictitious.  Then, when I looked up the cast member mentioned by Eunice, who has seen the movie before, I found out it is real, and now I have got to see it.  The other thing is, when I examined its plot, it is very close to Shirley Conran's "Lace."

                                                           Consider this.

                                                            "Three Secrets," released in 1950, which was unfavorably compared to Joseph L. Mankiewicz' film of the previous year, "A Letter To Three Wives," and was directed, way before "The Sound Of Music," by Robert Wise, concerns three women--Eleanor Parker, Patricia Neal, and Ruth Roman, all of whom, several years before, gave birth to an illegitimate son.  In the present time, a plane crashes in the California mountains, and each woman examines the past, wondering if the 5-year-old boy, who survived, could be their illegitimate son.  The mother's identity was not revealed until nearly the end.  I wonder if I could have figured it out.

                                                                 I did figure it out with "Lace," having read the novel and seen the mini-series, because, once I discovered Bess Armstrong was in the cast, I knew she was going to be the mother.  I never could stand Armstrong, who came off like Miss Perfect, but whom I could tell was a raging bitch.  She never fooled me with that wholesome act.

                                                                  Phoebe Cates plays Lili, this one-step-up- from- a whore film actress, who tracks down, and confronts three women, played by Bess Armstrong, Brooke Adams, and Arielle Dombasle.  They all knew each other when young, and in boarding school.  All are basically tramps, who become involved with older men, but only one of them gets knocked up.
When the child, born on November 17, 1960, and given the name of Elizabeth Lace--hence the title--the girls, afterward, decide to go to go to a local doctor, who arranges for the child to be adopted.  He tells the girls, or, specifically, Lili's mother, that of the three, she was the one he would least have suspected.  He is fooled by that Bess Armstrong wholesome act, when I always knew, all the way back to the sitcom, "On Our Own," that she was a total bitch!

                                                                   Get this--the girls are found out (the mother's name is given as "Lucinda Lace) by the headmaster who threatens to expel them, but--oh, girls, this is a hoot!--this is foiled when the girls uncover photos of him having homosexual sex with the school's chauffeur, Paul!

Imagine!  Not just gay sex--but sex with a SERVANT?  The thought today still makes me shudder today!  Never do this, girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                                                    Lili is placed with Felix and Angelina Dassin.  One of the girls' aunts, named Hortense, agrees to pay for the child's upbringing.  But the couple are gunned down by soldiers in a tragic accident, and Lili is placed in a detention camp, where she remains for the next decade of her life.  After this, she begins to transform herself, become Lili, and when she is wealthy enough to do so, hires aa private investigator, to track down the girls, one of whom has become a journalist, the other the wife of a British aristocrat, and the other a French socialite.

                                                                    Lili, who gets the best lines, wants to get even for them making her life hell, and wants to also find out who her real mother is.  When Hortense tells Lili that this child is most likely dead, she says, "They'll wish I was.  They made their schoolgirl pact and sent me to Hell--I'll teach them what I learned there!"

                                                                    Honestly, girls, you just don't see this kind of writing anymore!  What a shame!

                                                                    The best line comes at the end, which is actually how "Lace" opens.  Most of it is told in flashback.  Having gathered the three women together in a hotel room, she faces them, and delivers the classic line, "Incidentally, which one of you bitches is my mother?"

Priceless, and this was probably the crowning moment of Phoebe Cates' career!

                                                                     Once the flashback ends, there is a shot of legs walking up a set of stairs to visit Lili, and it is learned that Judy Hale (Bess Armstrong) is her mother!  As stated, I was not fooled for a second, and when Armstrong's face is finally shown in this scene, I shouted, "I knew it!"  What a bitch!  If I had been Lili, I would have smacked her across the face!  Maybe all of them!

                                                                      So, think about it, dolls!  A 1950 movie about three women with a secret illegitimate child, and a 1984 novel  adaptation, of a story about three boarding school girls who agree to keep secret the illegitimate pregnancy of one of their friends.

                                                                        Coincidence, or inspiration?  What do you think?   The plots are eerily similar.

"Lace" is camp of the highest order!  I can't say the same for "Three Secrets," having not seen it yet, but I bet, at Miss Porter's "Lace" is required reading, along with "The Group," "Valley Of The Dolls," and Lillian Hellman's play, "The Children's Hour."

And just look at this jacket cover!  Isn't this all how we should be living, darlings???????????

You mean, you aren't?????????????????