By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: 1976’s The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, the small screen classic starring John Travolta, Robert Reed, Diana Hyland and Glynnis O’Connor.
Despite its in-built humility (and occasional and very regrettable disposability), there are some truly iconic, culturally significant entries in the telemovie canon. Though certainly not carrying the weight of, say, The Godfather or Schindler’s List, high-profile small screen features like Brian’s Song (1971), The Day After (1983), Threads (1984) and The Burning Bed (1984) – and especially mini-series “events” like Roots (1977) and Holocaust (1978) – carry an undeniable heft and zeitgeist resonance, with some even forcing change in societal views and ideas at large.
Fitting in with these essential titles is 1976’s The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, which is based on the tragic true story of David Vetter, who was born without a properly functioning immune system and lived his entire life inside a germ-free plastic compartment. Young David (whose debilitating condition would later be termed SCID, for Severe Combined Immunodeficiency) eventually became something of a media cause celebre, and with the telemovie form famed for tackling current trends, his story was reshaped for fictional purposes, with the resultant film becoming a huge hit when it first aired on major US network ABC on November 12, 1976.
Though David Vetter himself questioned the veracity of much of The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, the telemovie’s cultural relevance and influence is unquestionable. Paul Simon’s 1985 song “The Boy In The Bubble” was inspired by the telemovie, which has also been referenced on TV series such as That ’70s Show and NCIS. There was also, of course, the gut-bustingly insensitive Seinfeld episode “The Bubble Boy”, in which Jason Alexander’s put-upon but utterly monstrous George Costanza famously plays Trivial Pursuit against an arrogant, aggressive, abusive SCID-afflicted young man confined to a plastic compartment (climaxing with the classic “It’s The Moops” sequence), gleefully and ingeniously providing some of the classic sitcom’s funniest and most misanthropic moments. The much later films Bubble Boy (2001), Safe (1995) and Everything, Everything (2017) all deal with SCID and thus owe at least some element of debt to1976’s The Boy In The Plastic Bubble.
As well as its cultural significance, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble is notable for a number of other reasons. The film was an early work for perennially under-rated director Randal Kleiser, who delivered another seminal telemovie that same year with Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway (in which The Brady Bunch’s Eve Plumb aka Jan goes very, very dark), and would later go on to direct the youth classics Grease (1978) and The Blue Lagoon (1980), and the superb and cruelly under-celebrated AIDS-themed drama It’s My Party (1996).
Equally importantly, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble is where Randal Kleiser first worked with his eventual Grease leading man John Travolta, who was then in the midst of his pre-Saturday Night Fever initial burst of fame as the swaggering Vinnie Barbarino on the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, while also appearing in big screen features like The Devil’s Rain (1975) and Carrie (1976). The Boy In The Plastic Bubble was produced by TV powerhouses Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg (Charlie’s Angels, Starsky & Hutch), and finally, the screenwriter on the telemovie was Douglas Day Stewart, who would go on to pen Kleiser’s The Blue Lagoon, and Taylor Hackford’s masterful An Officer And A Gentleman (1982), while also writing and directing his own films Thief Of Hearts (1984) and Listen To Me (1989).
The Boy In The Plastic Bubble begins in the late 1950s, with married couple Johnny and Mickey Lubitch (terrific work from The Brady Bunch’s Robert Reed and the lovely Diana Hyland, who became romantically involved with Travolta during filming and tragically passed away from cancer a year later in 1977) being informed by Dr. Gunther (Ralph Bellamy) that their impending child (like the previous baby that the couple lost) could very likely suffer from serious immune issues. Upon the birth of their son Tod, Dr. Gunther’s concerns prove to be founded, and massive efforts are undertaken to keep the child alive in a germ-free plastic compartment. That compartment is eventually expanded to take up an entire room in the family home by the time Tod is a teenager, now played by John Travolta, with a winning mix of innocent charm and youthful exuberance.
The bulk of The Boy In The Plastic Bubble plays out in compelling coming-of-age fashion, with the keenly intelligent but socially isolated and awkward Tod attempting to navigate the move from cloistered child to more independent adolescent. This is achieved first by the use of Closed-Circuit TV (this was waaaaay before Zoom and Teams, younger readers), which allows Tod to remotely participate in classes at his local high school, and then by a specially designed air-tight suit which gives Tod outside mobility and makes it possible for him to actually attend school physically for the first time. In full Mike Brady mode, Robert Reed is at his energetic, enthused-but-concerned best here as Tod’s can-do dad, always backed by the more reserved Diana Hyland.
Tod’s high school journey is complicated considerably by his complex, often difficult relationship with his longtime neighbour Gina Biggs, played by Glynnis O’Connor, who enjoyed a brief run as a 1970s ingenue courtesy of two films with heartthrob and Unsung Auteur Robby Benson (1973’s Jeremy, 1976’s Ode To Billy Joe) and other era essentials like Baby Blue Marine (1971), Kid Vengeance (1976) and California Dreaming (1979). As established earlier in the film, Gina has known Tod nearly all their lives, and she’s always been, well, a bit of a bitch, treating her involuntary shut-in neighbour like a freak and even making him the butt of a few cruel pranks and surprisingly mean-spirited verbal put-downs. Tod, however, has long remained smitten with his neighbour, and once he begins high school, Gina begins to soften. A relationship eventually develops between the two, leading to seventies-essential images like Gina jumping her horse over Tod’s portable plastic compartment, and the pair enjoying a walk on the beach…complete with Tod in his orange germ-free airtight suit.
While Robert Reed, Diana Hyland and Ralph Bellamy are excellent, and there are a few added scene-stealers on board too (cult star P.J Soles is wondrously hyper as one of Gina’s friends; The Wanderers’ John Friedrich is great as a fellow SCID sufferer with whom Tod briefly bonds; and legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin even appears as himself in one scene!), John Travolta and Glynnis O’Connor are pretty much the whole show in The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, and they enjoy a spiky, tempestuous chemistry that gives the film a real kick. Theirs is not quite the sweet, innocent relationship that you might expect, which is wonderfully wrong-footing at every turn for the audience. Against all odds, Tod and Gina still stand as one of the truly great 1970s TV couples.
This central relationship is just one of the many pleasures of this deeply moving, sensitively directed telemovie, which really drives home its central theme of the desperate need for connection that ultimately drives us all. Much more than just an essential pop cultural artefact (though it’s certainly that too), The Boy In The Plastic Bubble is an emotionally resonant work that likely still reverberates powerfully with those who watched it when it was first broadcast, with its ambiguously dreamy ending one of the most beguiling and bewitching of any telemovie ever aired.
Availability: Currently in the public domain, and released on VHS and DVD by nefarious companies many times since its broadcast, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble is also currently available in a slick, crystal clear presentation via YouTube Movies, which you can enjoy “free with ads.”
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, A Very Brady Christmas, The Gladiator, Elvis, The Rat Pack, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story, Terror Among Us, The Hanged Man, Hardcase, Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas, Vanishing Point, To Heal A Nation, Fugitive Among Us, To Kill A Cop, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Police Story: A Chance To Live, Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town and Tribes.
