Butterflies Are Free

This film version of Leonard Gershe's Butterflies are Free which ran for 1128 performances on Broadway from 1969 to 1972 transfers the location from Greenwich Village in Manhattan to the hippest areas of San Francisco circa the Seventies. Eileen Heckart and Paul Michael Glaser, later Starsky on Starsky&Hutch retain their original roles.

Replacing Keir Dullea and Blythe Danner in the leads are Edward Albert and Goldie Hawn. This was Edward Albert's film debut and Hawn was following up the Oscar she won for Cactus Flower. Both of them fit their parts perfectly.

But I can hardly see anyone else in the role of Albert's overprotective Mama than Eileen Heckart. Though she's only in the film in the second half, Heckart really dominates the proceedings. So much so she got an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress that year. Heckart also avoids the usual stereotyping as the mom, but she does register real concern for her kid going out in the world.

Edward Albert is her twenty something son who is trying to break free from his mom and is now living in an apartment that has a connecting door to the next apartment which is occupied by free spirited hippie chick, Goldie Hawn. Of course the key here is that Albert is blind, blind from birth. They develop into quite the romance that Heckart tries to break up.

Do love Goldie's fashion sense. See the episode where she takes Albert out of the apartment and clothes shopping. Remember those seventies fashions? Straight off the rack or the body of Barry Williams as Greg Brady.