Money on the Side (1982 TV Movie)
6/10
Much more sophisticated than the plotline indicates.
26 June 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Karen Gordon's name might as well be Stephanie Forrester. The head of a prominent real estate agency, she's quite commanding and very glamorous, and she runs a different kind of business on the side or out of town clients who want some companionship. No Street corner operator this lady. Susan Flannery who won multiple Emmys for playing the matriarch of a family who ran a prominent Los Angeles fashion firm on "The Bold and the Beautiful", gets to be a lot more easy going and less manipulative than Stephanie was, perhaps closer to the character of Leslie Stewart that she had played the previous season on "Dallas".

So in watching this film, the idea that three women in need of quick money turn to prostitution goes straight out the window, because it is a lot more honorable than that, just as an escort service with male employees escorting older women wouldn't necessarily indicate something physical. That being said, Flannery subtlety indicates that the physical side of the business could be required, if the additional price is right.

Definitely ahead of its time in the women's sexual revolution, this shows the life as seen through three different women. Karen Valentine's husband is going through some financial issues so she wants to help out, and divorced mother Jamie Lee Curtis is in debt herself. The younger Linda Purl, who works as Flannery's real estate company stenographer, gets into the life simply because she's there.

This is a surprisingly good drama where you respect the three women for the strength that they have to find to endure their hardships. It is not played for comedy in any way, yet there is no finger pointing or judgmental attitudes, just a drama about survival, where the experience of the three ladies promises to make them stronger perfect and survive the tough times and the not so gentlemanly clients. The men presented in that way are not one dimensional or cliched, although a few deserve the slap that Curtis gives to Joe Lambie.
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