“Butterflies Are Free” Irresistible Charmer

By Wanda Hale 

Daily News, Friday July 7, 1972

“Butterflies Are Free,” is an irresistible charmer, an exceptional love story, funny and moving, with laughter a length ahead of sobriety all the way. What with a delightful picture and A Hawaiian stage show, have yourself a summer jubilee no farther away from Radio City Music Hall.

The lovers are an irrepressible girl and a young man, blind, but no means defenseless. Goldie Hawn, with a face of an animated doll and the cutest wiggle this side of paradise, is better than ever as the kooky broad who chatters intensely, telling her life story, listening to his. No harm intended when she speaks, thoughtlessly, of his handicap. Apologies are not needed, he assures her.

EXTREMLY HANDSOME, with a resonate voice; Edward Albert commands attention and admiration by attaining and sustaining the illusion of blindness. He plays the guitar and sings well, too. By living alone in a one bedroom San Francisco apartment, Don Baker (Edward Albert) is proving his independence to his overly protective mother. Jill (Goldie) moves into the adjoining flat and it isn’t long and it isn’t long before the door between them is unlocked and left open.

Jill first sees Don standing at an open window (for a breath of fresh air), his face turned toward her window. After learning he is blind, she tells him she thought he was a peeping Tom and nearly called the police. Giggling, she said, “Suppose I had?” His quick reply, “They’d have YOU locked up.”

“Butterflies Are Free,” is blessed with a beautifully written screenplay by Leonard Gershe, author of the prize-winning play that opened on Broadway in November 1969 and closed just last Sunday. One sequence goes deeper than the happy humor and natural romance. But a single tissue hankie will take care of a tear or three shed over the brief break in the the cozy relationship.

M.J. Frankovich, producer for Columbia Pictures, did everything right to make the screen adaptation of the play a unified success. Beside getting Gershe to write the screen adaptation of the script, Frankovich invaded he theater, recruiting the director, Milton Katselas, in that same capacity on the movie, Michael Glaser to repeat the part of the loft theater director who thinks who thinks he has the aspiring actress, Jill, in his pocket. And, marvelous actress, Eileen Heckart.

Miss Heckart, in the role she created onstage (she was nominated for a Tony and, later, was acclaimed in London), is Mrs. Baker, the mother reluctant to give her son his freedom. Motivated by fear, she feels he cannot take care of himself.

Paying an uninvited visit to Don, Mrs. Baker is appaled at the neighborhood, disgusted with the pad, orderly but shabbily furnished. Looking it over, she says, dripping with honey, “It isn’t exactly Buckingham Palace, is it?” Sweetly smiling he replies, “no, it’s the Taj Mahal.” She gets the point.

MOTHER WISENS UP, admits her fault and cuts the cord that bound Don to her for more than 20 years. The meeting of the two women, the adorable seductress and the smart, haughty suburban matron, is quite a battle.

Director Katselas keeps most of the action in Don’s flat, moving occasionally to Jill’s disorderly room, onto the streets, into a hippie boutique and to a restaurant. He puts the pieces to together craftily, the cast moves naturally under his guidance and tosses off Gershe’s dialogue, sparkling with humor or touchingly human, as though they never read the script.