To this day, watching the show is to have fun while others work–be it sick days or summer mornings.
In considering the societal importance of the pricing game, I was distracted again by something that was a distraction when I was in my early teens.
I had an affair with Vanna White.
Not in the traditional sense, obviously, but I did find myself ditching the first half of The Price is Right to watch her turn letters on Wheel of Fortune. I soon discovered her name was Vanna, which sounds like a waitress at a small-town diner. That could be a situation of the chicken or the egg, however.
Vanna White’s 1980s popularity surge happened to coincide with my early teen hormonal surge. I never much cared for Wheel of Fortune, but I was fascinated with the woman with the annealed dirty blond hair and 100-watt smile. I endured dimbulb contestants, daft puzzles, Pat Sajak’s veiled sarcasm, the shopping sprees with the penultimate transaction being the reluctant acquisition of a porcelain Dalmatian. The modest balance would be put on a Service Merchandise gift certificate. All for a few glimpses.
Constructing a personality profile was difficult. Vanna would join Pat to close the show–some sort of campy sendoff during which she was typically restricted to a twangy, “bye-bye.”. Even as a panting fanboy dressed as Zack Morris, I suspected Vanna was a meretricious hood ornament, though I hoped for more.
I figured that If there was anything else there to exploit, it would’ve happened. Merv Griffin was a genius with that sort of thing. Not that it really mattered. One of the more important qualities of being on television is being telegenic. Besides, I was a freshly christened teen. What did I know about depth? The most recent book I’d read was Steve Garvey’s biography.
Nowadays, with a ubiquitous Web, fleeting celebrity crushes can be diffused by a quick Google search that turns up a sordid dating history, sketchy alliances, stupid quotes, or unflattering paparazzi photos. Back then, any scrap of information would have been welcome. Favorite color. Loyalty to a sports team. A rock band.
I wasn’t the only one smitten. Evidently, thousands of people had made the same discovery and craved information. Magazine articles began appearing. Stories were printed in the newspaper (if you count USA Today). There was the memoira. This is a fabricated term for an exceedingly short memoir, similar to a novella.
Vanna Mania was in full bloom.
Goddess of Love was a classic example of testing boundaries. It premiered in the autumn of 1988 on the National Broadcasting Company. Vanna White played Venus–a statue that comes to life to court a hairstylist played by “I’m A Pepper,” himself, David Naughton.
The idea was to capitalize on Ms. White’s enormous popularity and show that she’s capable of more than turning letters. I mean, on paper it sounded like a sure thing. Vanna White plus David Naughton plus mythology. It was a can’t-miss. Not completely, anyway. Think of it as the Peter principle for entertainment.
I tuned in that Sunday night back in 1988 with baited curiosity. I was rooting for Vanna but feared the worst. After a few minutes, I changed the channel. It was a Hindenburg-style crash and burn. I wouldn’t feel that level of deflation again for almost a decade. That was when Cindy Crawford insisted on doing her own singing in that Charlie perfume commercial. Ironically, Little Richard was part of that abortion, too.
In light of my waltz down memory lane, I decided that in the interest of fairness (and due to an early summer heatwave), I would watch Goddess of Love in its entirety. I was shocked and appalled to find streaming services wanting me to pay to watch this anachronistic chunk of Limburger. Fortunately, there is FreeVee, a venerable reliquary for theatrical and television crap. Sure, I saw the same ad for a rheumatoid arthritis drug eighteen times, but nobody got $2.99 out of me.
The film opens poolside, somewhere in southern California. It is shot with a sepia filter to remind the viewer this happened long ago. Venus is on trial for starting the Trojan War and playing an odd variation of Fuck, Kill, Marry. As punishment, she is turned to stone. The result looks like Lou Ferrigno with spaghetti for hair.
In what I believe was intended as a humorous opening scene, Ms. White’s acting is so wooden, the Romans could’ve nailed Jesus to it. I remembered why I’d given up so early 35 years ago. It was going to be a long ninety minutes. But at least people with rheumatoid arthritis were finding a better way.
Flash forward to 1980s Los Angeles where the hideous Chef Boy-ar-Ferrigno statue is purported to be one of the most valuable in the world. Accordingly, It is displayed at the center of a one-room museum. A pair of semi-retarded deeze and doze crooks haul it out on a hand truck immediately after the museum closes. Their plan is to flip it for a fortune. Given the sculpture’s fame and uniqueness, I’m unsure how they planned to liquidate it. However, they didn’t strike me as art aficionados and were likely only marginal criminals. For the time being, they loaded it in a cargo van and drove off with police in pursuit. After eluding the fuzz, they opted to store the statue in the courtyard of a singles bar.
This particular courtyard boasted several statues (as nightclub entrances often do), allowing Venus to blend in seamlessly.
Meanwhile, David Naughton (Ted) is the Jay Sebring of his day, owning a high-end salon (called Heads Up) that caters to particularly randy cougars. Naughton is marrying Amanda Bearse(!) in two days and is best friends with David Leisure–best known as Joe Izuzu–who attempts to deliver comic relief as the wise-cracking horndog, Jimmy. Leisure is engagingly smarmy, but the source material is awful.
The two are at the aforementioned bar for a de facto bachelor party when Ted escapes to the courtyard, preoccupied with thoughts of his fiance.
In an ill-advised attempt to show Jimmy the concept of commitment, Ted slips his fiance’s heirloom ring on the Venus statue’s finger. The seemingly harmless but completely unnecessary act brings the statue to life. Alive again, Venus immediately plants her flag in Ted and declares him to be her true love. From here, the plot becomes an extended episode of Three’s Company, which is to say it is a straw house of deceit.
Complicating matters, Venus initially only comes to life for Ted (a la Michigan J. Frog) and like a small child, refuses to return the ring or consider Ted had a life prior to her arrival. Venus also threatens to crush any romantic rivals. Ted becomes scattered, as one might suspect. He juggles his business, where Little Richard is his best employee while preparing for a wedding and trying to get his ring back. The thieves continue to lurk, still bent on hoarking a famous statue.
Idiocy Hilarity ensues with bad plot, bad acting, and bad music. Venus eventually becomes accustomed to life in 1980s LA and goes on a Rodeo Drive shopping spree, maxing out Ted’s credit cards. After all, it was the 1980s, when credit was king.
Few things are as odd as watching David Naughton straining to carry the weight of such a shitty production. There are scenes in this movie where he is literally the only person with any acting chops. I just wanted to give him a can of Dr. Pepper and let him dance his cares away.
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| "Can I have a G, G?" |
Vanna White was not drop-dead gorgeous the way I recalled from my adolescence. Granted, most of her look was timestamped from 1987. She may as well have been a Chevy Citation. I was most distracted by her hair (when it didn’t resemble a bowl of spaghetti). There was a lot of it, arranged in an intricate series of combovers that would leave Donald Trump’s stylist baffled.
Along the way, the film is loaded with artifacts from the time.
–slub sports jackets
–Chrysler LeBaron convertible
–Polaroids
–Gas in California at $.93.
–Shoulder pads
–Vanna White
By any metric, the movie was awful. Her star would never shine as bright as it did in the 1980s, but Vanna survived. There have been other cameos, with expectations adjusted accordingly. Technology could have taken her job decades ago, but she’s become a fixture. She’s the rarest of creatures–a sexagenerian model. Not terrible for a meretricious hood ornament, really.
