Robert Gist is probably best known to film buffs as an actor as one of the detectives assigned to tail Farley Granger in 'Strangers on a Train' and as a director the name that appears at the end of the 1967 'Star Trek' episode 'The Galileo Seven'. On the strength of his version of Norman Mailer's 'An American Dream' he made it into Andrew Sarris's chapter devoted to 'Oddities, One-Shots and Newcomers' in his book 'American Cinema', in which he opined that "His stylistic conviction deserves another chance with less intransigent material."
Seemingly unknown to Sarris, Gist already had 'Della' under his belt. Intended as the pilot for a 'Peyton Place' inspired TV series, but with a melodramatic plot that resembles William Dieterle's 'Love Letters', plus fifties trapping like glossy colour, and complete with a thundering music score which every now and then wells up and signals whenever an add break was originally coming. It reunites Joan Crawford (dressed up to the nines and loving it) & Diane Baker, who had just starred for William Castle in 'Strait-Jacket', as yet another mother and daughter with an extremely fraught relationship. Since both Crawford & Baker receive 'guest star' billing, it's hard to see how the series would have managed without them.
Seemingly unknown to Sarris, Gist already had 'Della' under his belt. Intended as the pilot for a 'Peyton Place' inspired TV series, but with a melodramatic plot that resembles William Dieterle's 'Love Letters', plus fifties trapping like glossy colour, and complete with a thundering music score which every now and then wells up and signals whenever an add break was originally coming. It reunites Joan Crawford (dressed up to the nines and loving it) & Diane Baker, who had just starred for William Castle in 'Strait-Jacket', as yet another mother and daughter with an extremely fraught relationship. Since both Crawford & Baker receive 'guest star' billing, it's hard to see how the series would have managed without them.