By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Gary Nelson, who helmed Freaky Friday, Molly And Lawless John and The Black Hole.
Like so many other directors who have featured in the Unsung Auteurs column, the late Gary Nelson’s lack of recognition grows largely from the fact that most of his work was done for the small screen, where he directed episodic television by the truck-load and a fine collection of telemovies, many of them important examples of the modest form. His feature films number just five, but there are some truly fascinating (and culturally significant) cinematic artefacts on Gary Nelson’s resume that mark him as a talent well and truly worthy of greater discussion.
Born in Los Angeles in 1934, Gary Nelson began his career as a second assistant director, doing uncredited work on various TV programmes, along with cinema classics like Rebel Without A Cause, Guys And Dolls, The Searchers, Funny Face, and Gunfight At The OK Corral. Nelson moved into the director’s chair in the early 1960s, and then proceeded to call the shots on an extraordinary list of TV classics including Gunsmoke, The Patty Duke Show, F Troop, Gilligan’s Island, Gomer Pyle: USMC, Get Smart, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, The Doris Day Show and many, many more. While seemingly directing non-stop for television right into the 1970s and beyond, Nelson also found the time to make his big screen debut with the gritty 1972 western Molly And Lawless John.
Considering his prior work on sitcoms and variety shows, this terse, small-scale western represented a major detour for Gary Nelson, while also showcasing his considerable skill with actors. In an early role, non-moustachioed Sam Elliott is excellent as Johnny Lawler, an outlaw condemned to die who finds an unlikely ally in Molly Parker (the impressive Vera Miles), the unhappy, neglected wife of the cold, unfeeling sheriff (John Anderson) who brought Johnny in. Desperate and intrigued by the surprisingly sensitive outlaw, Molly frees Johnny and the duo flees, beginning a strange journey stained with both romance and violence. Practically a two-hander, Molly And Lawless John is a rare western with a genuine female lead, and Nelson proves impressively adept at capturing the yearning and sadness of a lonely woman in the scrappy, cruel Old West.
The following year, Nelson appeared to be setting himself up as a western specialist with the 1973 flick Santee. Though a traditional genre piece, this Glenn Ford starrer was also something of a cinematic milestone: it was one of the first motion pictures to be shot electronically on videotape, using Norelco PCP-70 portable plumbicon NTSC cameras and portable Ampex VR-1200 2” VTRs, before being transferred to film at Consolidated Film Industries in Hollywood. Technical boldness aside, Santee is a tidy, modest western that again forefronts unconventional emotional connections, this time between a young man (Michael Burns) and the surprisingly decent and upstanding bounty hunter (an authoritative Glenn Ford in the title role) who killed his outlaw father. As with Molly And Lawless John, there is certainly blood and mayhem, but it’s in the unlikely developing father-son relationship that Santee really sings.
Just as he looked likely to mount up as a teller of interesting and unconventional western tales, Gary Nelson moved from the wide-open plains to the far more constricting surrounds of The Mouse House with the seminal and influential 1976 Disney flick Freaky Friday. Presumably cherry-picked for his skilful and plentiful work on TV comedy, Nelson does a stellar job with this funny, pointed, and very popular winner about a bickering mother and teenage daughter (Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster are fantastic here) who inexplicably swap bodies and get a not-so-sweet taste of how the other one lives on the titular day. A terrific piece of Generation Gap comedy, Freaky Friday inspired not just a gaggle of remakes, but also the entire “body swap” genre that takes in the likes of Vice Versa, Like Father, Like Son, Dating The Enemy, Freaky and many more.
Nelson stayed with Disney for his next film, though it marked a major tonal and stylistic shift for The Mouse House. 1979’s sci-fi mini-epic The Black Hole was the family-friendly studio’s first PG-rated effort, and was considerably darker and more complex than their usual output. Though it had been in development for many years with a number of different filmmaking talents, by the time it came to Gary Nelson, The Black Hole had been heavily influenced by George Lucas’s 1977 game-changer Star Wars. Involving a US space crew, talking robots, an interstellar bad guy, the eponymous black hole, some impressive, groundbreaking special effects, and an impressive cast including Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine and Maximillian Schell, The Black Hole is an important film on the Disney roster and a minor cult fave in its own right. It’s also a lot of fun, and offers further proof of Gary Nelson’s incredible versatility.
Though he directed only two more feature films (the 1982 Gary Coleman vehicle Jimmy The Kid and the 1986 Richard Chamberlain/Sharon Stone action-adventure sequel Alan Quartermain And The Lost City Of Gold), Gary Nelson continued to work frequently in television up until his retirement in the late 1990s. Nelson helmed a number of major television projects including 1977’s Washington: Behind Closed Doors and 1988’s Noble House, and also formed an important small screen relationship with country music superstar and occasional actor Johnny Cash. Nelson directed three superb telemovies starring The Man In Black – 1981’s The Pride Of Jesse Hallam (in which Cash movingly plays an illiterate coal miner); 1983’s Murder In Coweta County (a true crime drama starring Cash and Andy Griffiths); and 1984’s The Baron And The Kid (a pool-playing drama) – thus playing a major footnote role in the legacy of one of America’s greatest cultural figures.
A prolific filmmaker and non-stop worker, Gary Nelson continued to guest lecture at The University of Nevada, Las Vegas until his passing from congestive heart failure on May 25, 2022, at the age of 87. Gary Nelson was one of the first directors to shoot a feature on video; he helped create the “body swap” genre; he guided Disney’s move into darker, more adult-oriented territory; he assisted in the development of new cinema technology; and he played a major role in the television acting career of Johnny Cash. That’s quite a list of achievements…the late Gary Nelson is deserving of far, far greater attention and celebration.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
