The Girls of Huntington House (1973 TV Movie) User Reviews

A blast from the past and the year of Roe vs. Wade.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 28 July 2022]

It's interesting to note that this film about unwed teenage mothers came out that year, obviously before based on a conversation that Shirley Jones has during the film. She plays a new teacher at a home and school for teens in the family way, dealing with troubled Sissy Spacek who challenges her reasoning for caring and tough school superintendent Mercedes McCambridge. Jones certainly does get a bit too involved in their lives, but it's with the best intentions even those get her into trouble.

The cast of three Academy Award winning actresses (Spacek yet to be) is quite good with a young Pamela Sue Martin also quite good. William Window, as Jones' boyfriend, provides a voice of reason for her, while Carmen Zapata, Helen Page Kamp and Katherine MacGregor (with a Scottish accent) are quite good as staff members. Everything's fine for these girls until their family members, indicating why they had problems in the first place. Dated, but well acted, with veterans Jones and McCambridge noticeably upstaged by the young Spacek.

Beautiful

[millielammoreaux · 25 October 2000]

This is a really beautiful movie about a home and school for young unwed mothers and a teacher who becomes too involved with her students. Sissy Spacek is my favorite actress, and here she stars as a young pregnant, determined to follow her heart and run her own life. She soon is confronted with a new teacher, portrayed by Shirley Jones, and totally disagrees with the lifestyle of the mature woman, stating her as being emotionally crippled. It´s very moving to witness the fights and discussions of the two strong characters, who, no matter how different their points of view, slowly grow to become friends. Although at times it is too obvious this was "only" made for TV, it still is a touching and sweet little film.

"Getting fired is not a dishonorable exit...at least you didn't quit."

[moonspinner55 · 4/10 · 28 July 2016]

Shirley Jones plays the new English teacher at a maternity house for pregnant, unwed teenage girls in this well-meaning ABC-TV movie-of-the-week. Jones (who was just finishing her reign as one of the coolest television moms, Shirley Partridge, on "The Partridge Family") easily slides into this melodramatic scenario, which at times feels like a reform school movie with all the inmates about to deliver. Jones has been hired by the administration despite not having her "special degree"--and yet, we never see her actually teach. Instead, director Alf Kjellin and writer Paul Savage open the film with a flurry of hysterical activity that doesn't help us get our bearings, and put their remaining interest in rebellious flower child Sissy Spacek and her determination to get the cold-fish teacher where she lives. With its TV-movie time restraint and low-end budget, the movie's dramatic impetus (the teacher learning to feel and the headstrong student making a life-changing decision) is barely allowed to bloom. Still, Spacek (who also sings and plays the guitar) gives a solid performance; her character isn't particularly likable or sympathetic, yet the actress is full of vitality and cynical wisdom, along with a youthful Mother Earth quality that makes her line-readings wry and ironic. Jones gives the movie its foundation, but Spacek gives it a driving force of personality. It's too bad the narrative is squashed and the individual scenes are not allowed to build, causing Pamela Sue Martin, Tina Andrews and the other girls to look like also-rans.