Main Cast: Paul Michael Glaser, Goldie Hawn, Edward Albert, Eileen Heckart, Mike Warren
Release Year: 1972
Country: US
Run Time: 109 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Leonard Gershe based his play Butterflies are Free on a real-life blind attorney. The film version stars Edward Albert as Don Baker, a self-reliant, sightless young man who becomes the object of affection for kooky Jill (Goldie Hawn). Spending most of the film in nothing but her underwear, Jill makes love to Don, then tries to help him break free from the smothering influence of his mother, a children's-story writer (Eileen Heckart). The situation grows tense when Jill's boyfriend (Paul Michael Glaser) enters the scene. Eileen Heckart won an Academy Award for her performance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Butterflies Are Free is a pleasing romantic comedy highlighted by Eileen Heckart's Oscar-winning performance as the dominating mother of a blind man (Edward Albert) befriended by a free-spirited neighbor (Goldie Hawn). Adapted by Leonard Gershe from his hit Broadway play, the film has a self-contained feel, with limited locations and most of the dialogue taking place between the three main characters. Cinematographer Charles B. Lang does a good job, particularly with the challenge of keeping the mostly set-bound film visually interesting. Butterflies Are Free is at its best when Hawn and Heckart are on screen together. Heckart manages to convey a sense of caring that seeps through her controlling personality, adding a richness to the character that both critics and audiences found appealing. While the dénouement is predictable, it has a crowd-pleasing quality that has kept this film popular, particularly among fans of Hawn. ~ Richard Gilliam, All Movie Guide
Moss Mabry - Costume Designer, Ivan Volkman - First Assistant Director, Milton Katselas - Director, David Blewitt - Editor, Bob Alcivar - Composer (Music Score), Robert Clatworthy - Production Designer, Charles B. Lang - Cinematographer, Mike J. Frankovich - Producer, Marvin March - Set Designer, Leonard Gershe - Screenwriter, Leonard Gershe - Play Author
Butterflies Are Free (1969), a play by Leonard Gershe. [ Booth Theatre, 1,128 perf.] To escape his domineering mother, Don Baker (Keir Dullea) has taken his own apartment in New York. The decision is a brave one, since Don is totally blind. Before long Don is having an affair with his new neighbor, the slightly kooky actress Jill Tanner (Blythe Danner), but his mother (Eileen Heckart) will not leave Don alone. She and Jill are soon locked in battle, and for a while it seems that Mrs. Baker will scare Jill into leaving Don. When Jill claims she simply does not want to be tied down to anyone, Don recognizes it as her unwillingness to commit to anyone, calling her “emotionally retarded . . . crippled. I'd rather be blind.” Jill stays and Don's mother finally lets him live his own life. A small play with an essentially pathetic theme, it was hailed by Richard Watts Jr. of the Post as “humourous, winning and quietly moving.” This was the only successful play by Gershe, who was primarily a screenwriter.
Loosely based on the life of attorney Harold Krents, the plot revolves around a Manhattan blind man whose controlling mother disapproves of his relationship with a free-spirited hippie. The title was inspired by a passage in Charles Dickens' Bleak House: "I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies."
Gershe, Katselas, and Heckart reunited for the 1972 screen adaptation (set in San Francisco) with Edward Albert and Goldie Hawn. Heckart won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Albert received a Golden Globe as Most Promising Male Newcomer.
