"Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy" (1981)
Rod Taylor plays "Black Jack" Bouvier, the father of the famous
first lady in what ABC billed as an "affectionate portrait of Jackie
and Jack Kennedy."
The story begins when Jackie was 5 years old and ends following President
Kennedy's assassination. Jaclyn Smith earned a Golden Globe nomination for
her portrayal of Jackie, but Rod steals the show from the very first scene.
The New York Times agreed in an Oct. 14, 1981: "Interestingly enough,
Bouvier, played with rough but affecting compassion by Rod Taylor, is the only
character who brings a dash of life to the film's bland proceedings."
The show opens with "Black Jack" motoring along in a bright
red roadster, on top of the world. Over the years, Black Jack's fortunes
diminish, but he retains his charm and is adored by Jackie despite his flaws.
His final scene with his daughter should mark the end of the movie, as he
bestows the wisdom upon her that the world came to know: Stand up to the
spotlight, but hold yourself aloof.
The movie dies along with Black Jack, as the show stumbles along through
the Kennedy administration and wraps up with some corny "Camelot"
references.
Tom Shales, the usually grumpy TV critic of the Washington Post, heaped
praise upon Rod in an otherwise unfavorable review from Oct. 14, 1981 (the
date the show first aired):
There is, upon this film's frothy field of taffeta, one
genuine and dimensional performance -- Rod Taylor as Jackie's ne'er-do-well
but adored father, "Black Jack" Bouvier. Now that Taylor is too
old for the macho muscleboy parts, his face has suddenly become interesting
and full of character. And with a little Gablesque pencil mustache, he
makes a touchingly downtrodden old sport, grandly keeping up appearances
and telling his daughter to get up and walk after she falls off a horse.
One begins to long for Taylor's reappearances since he
is about the only excuse for a human being in the picture. He pops back
into the story when the Bouvier-Kennedy engagement is announced, trying
to bum a cutaway coat off a clothier so he can pridefully give the bride
away. But while the wedding ceremony is taking place, the camera searches
him out in his hotel, where he has fallen asleep drunk.
An Oct. 13, 1981, review in the Chicago Tribune noted:
Rod Taylor is wonderful as Black Jack Bouvier, Jackie's father... Black
Jack was ... "the most important relationship in her life," [said
Steven Gethers, the director and writer of the TV movie.] It is certainly the
most important relationship in the movie. Jackie's father was apparently
something of a gadabout, a drinker, a carouser. He loved all the finer things
in life, and considered his rebellious, independent-minded daughter one of the
finest.
A 1986 review in the Queensland Sunday Mail also noted Rod's performance:
[Jackie's] hard-drinking, womanising, gambling father,
Black Jack Bouvier, is given a gutsy representation by Rod Taylor who,
it is said, drew on his own hard-drinking and womanising experiences for
the part.
He is now a changed man. During the filming of this flick,
Taylor said: "Considering my past, I've finally been given a role
I truly deserve. It's natural casting."
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