P F A N D O M
Michelle Pfeiffer Retrospective. Episode 3
by Nathaniel R
Michelle Pfeiffer, Surrounded by the Male Gaze. That'd be a fitting title for the screen capture above and an apt description of her first major role. Her character on the 1979 sitcom Delta House wasn't even alloted a real name, but only referred to as 'The Bombshell'. Though Pfeiffer had, according to various sources always been wary with men and uncomfortable with her sex appeal, it will become one of the most fascinating things about her screen persona, this friction between how she looks and how cagey and sometimes even hostile she is about being looked at (but Scarface is a few weeks away!). Nevertheless she ran with the opportunity, despite her discomfort. A recurring role on a TV series is a big deal for young actors, financially and for the resume...
Confession: I have never seen the smash hit frathouse comedy Animal House (1978). But I have, now, seen a couple of episodes of its immediate TV sitcom spin-off Delta House (1979). The things I do for you, blogging! Or, rather, in this case, the things I do for Pfeiffer completism...
I regret to inform that within only about 5 minutes of the pilot starting there were anti-semitic, racist, and sexual assault jokes. HAHA. BOYS WILL BE BOYS. So this wasn't my thing. And, contrary to the IMDb credits, which could have saved me the pain of watching it, Michelle Pfeiffer does not appear in the pilot episode. But in the second episode "The Shortest Yard," we spot her almost immediately when a kicked football lands in her lap.
The frat brothers later enroll her to distract the crowds at a football game for some prank they're pulling. She pretends to do a striptease and the crowd on the bleachers (what looks like men with their wives) literally start shouting "Take it Off! Take it Off!". Incredulously, the cheerleaders join in with the chant doing a kick line. Everybody wants Pfeiffer.
Pfeiffer hated the part, the hot pants, and the stuffed bras. But you wouldn't know it exactly from her sunshine sexy demeanour.
In hindsight, it's easy to project meaning on to her silence (though it was surely scripted -- she doesn't get a single line in her first episode). Take her last scene for example. "Otter," one of the leads of the show who she seems to 'belong to' in the early episodes thanks her with an icky suggestive hypothetical question -- what would we do without "your favors" ?
This makeout session. How unknowable she is, smiling privately while he compliments her but I doubt she's actually listening. She's dreaming of better roles in the future, suffering a fool and can only shut him up with kisses.
The role didn't get less decorative. In the third episode her first scene is a gag in which she bends over in the tightest pants imaginable while one of the frat boys watches while licking an envelope he's about to mail. Cue laughtrack. Other jokes follow about older men leering at her when she pretends to be a campus guide. She gets a few lines but she doesn't yet sound much like Michelle Pfeiffer. There's a distinct whiff of early babydoll Melanie Griffith in the sound, childlike and pleasing, like vocal chords that are only used to flirt with men.
Though she didn't escape the hot pants (and now short shorts) in her second TV series B.A.D. Cats (1980), which was also a short-lived mid season January replacement, she did get a promotion. Now she was Samantha "Sunshine" Jensen, one of three leads in a cop show about hunting down car thieves. She worked the dispatch desk while the boys chased car thieves. While she was still decorative she had more agency. But the series lacked any kind of distinctive magic that separate it from every other cop show and was quickly off the air.
So back to Delta House for a moment to wrap up. The penultimate episode of the sitcom "Hoover and the Bomb" actually gives The Bombshell a big plotline. Before the series ended The Bombshell started to show actual emotion if not much personality. She pulls away from Otter who takes her for granted - not that she gets far, she's always on their couch -- and in this episode another of the frat boys falls for her and thinks she feels the same.
She does not.
Her plot involves her trying to figure out how to let him down gently since she 'loves all the guys' in the house... just not in that way.
In retrospect it's perfect, inspirational, and even prophetic that the last close-up of the future superstar in her first major role finds her in her own room with only a stuffed feline for company. It should not escape our notice that this is the first scene in her entire career in which Michelle Pfeiffer is totally alone onscreen. She smiles with self-satisfied pleasure.
The Bombshell, you see, has just escaped the romantic attention of another hapless man, blinded as all the others by that golden exterior. The Actress, who doesn't yet know it, has just escaped a role she hated (the show aired only one more episode), but not before finally claiming it. The Bombshell may never be granted a name (everyone on the show, including other women, calls her "Bombshell") but she's finally tricked the camera, and thus the audience, into seeing her as something beyond mere arm candy. All these men who want to claim her are peripheral and interchangeable; Michelle Pfeiffer herself is the fixed center and main attraction.
Previously: Miss Orange County and Fantasy Island
Next Saturday: Michelle's first feature film Hollywood Knights (1980). If you'd like to watch along with the series this one is available to stream on Amazon and iTunes.