Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story

Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 12/16/2008 Run time: 300 minutes

Poor Little Rich Girl vividly illustrates the maxim that money can't buy happiness. Seconds into this NBC miniseries, Barbara Hutton loses her mother to suicide, her financier father, Franklyn (Kevin McCarthy), pawns her off on her grandfather, five-and-dime king F.W. Woolworth (Burl Ives), who dies shortly afterwards, and then she goes to live with relatives in California. When her great-grandmother expires, Hutton (now played by Fairuza Balk) becomes a multi-millionaire and moves back to New York with her father. By adulthood, the globe-trotting Hutton (Farrah Fawcett) hasn't formed any lasting friendships, but enjoys the company of her kindly attendant, Tiki (Brenda Blethyn), and hard-drinking cousin, Jimmy (Bruce Davison), but with her good looks, vast fortune, and penchant for parties, men swarm like flies, leading to eight unhappy marriages, a neglected son, and a lost fortune.

Directed by the unpredictable Charles Jarrott (Anne of a Thousand Days, Lost Horizon) Poor Little Rich Girl boasts an impressive international cast, including Stéphane Audran and Zoë Wanamaker as family associates, but it's heavier on the suds than the psychology. That said, if Fawcett's appearance in a period production seems odd, she captures the pain behind the glittering façade, while McCarthy (The Invasion of the Body Snatchers) also impresses as her coldly protective father. Since Jarrott's protagonist lived through major historical events like the Great Depression and World War II, he uses a combination of recreated and newsreel footage to depict the changing times. As for Hutton's husbands, they include princes and counts, but only the fame of Cary Grant (Remington Steele’s James Read) surpasses her own--he's also, apparently, the only one to marry her for love. This two-disc set offers an additional hour (the US broadcast topped out at four). Glamorous outfits and jewels by Harry Winston complete this lavish ode to loneliness. --Kathleen C. Fennessy