Among all the novels written by Harold Robbins, this is my favorite. Following the book is much easier and if I must say so, a lot more seductive. Comparing the book to the movie, I can only appreciate the film is quicker to entice me to stay interested. The novel is superior, yet the cast in the film is much more believable. Directed by Daniel Petrie, " The BETSY " relates the story of Angelo Perino (Tommy Lee Jones) a professional race car driver and third generation Italian with Mafia connections. Nearly killed in a race, he is summoned to the Hardeman mansion where Loren Hardeman (Laurence Oliver), the patriarch of the family dynasty, purposes to him a secret plan to design a new car, called the BETSY. Although intrigued by the offer, Perino at first refuses, until he is promised a great deal of money and special options to purchase stock in the family run corporation. He must also run the gauntlet of family members out to prevent the secret plan. Among the more powerful is Loren Hardeman III (Robert Duvall) who has definite motives for preventing the building of the new car. Katharine Ross, Jane Alexander and Lesley-Anne Down as Lady Bobby Ayres play the powerful women of the Hardeman family, each, it is discovered have their own reasons for the success or failure of the venture. Betsy Hardeman (Kathlee Beller) is the lynch pin on which Perino and his ambitions will fail or not. Joseph Wiseman and Edward Herrmann are two key players which provide the inner mechanisms of and for the Betsy's future. The over all movie is split into both past and present happenings of how and why family members gravitate towards Perino's project. Steamy scenes and dark family secrets provide the novel's interest and were it not for the powerful performances of Laurence Oliver, Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall, the film, would have tanked. Instead it is now accepted as a film Classic and one representative of the times. ****
Review of The Betsy
