Family of Strangers

Patty Duke is Beth Thompson, beautician and mother of Julie Lawson (Melissa Gilbert) who had given the child away at birth. Seattle raised researcher Julie finds Beth in Cloverton, Canada, after it is discovered she is adopted and needs to know her medical history to treat a brain blood clot. Together they search for the identity of the father.

Duke and Gilbert have an ease and stillness together, with them both wet in the rain when Duke tells of a traumatic incident, and Duke giving Gilbert a shampoo. Gilbert gets to sing Let Me Call You Sweetheart as a lullaby to her own daughter Megan and a `God' with the dizziness that precedes a car crash, but Duke has more acting opportunities - messing up her salon in anger, matching her flashback of the birth reaching out for the baby who is taken away, and writhing on the ground in the forest in an re-enactment.

The teleplay by William Gough and Anna Sandor, based on a true story and the book Jody by Jerry Hulse, features dialogue on the level of `Before that night I hardly ever told a lie. After that night I hardly ever told the truth'. However director Sheldon Larry provides a 5 minute flashback in stop motion super 8 film stock (even if later he goes overboard with the gothic touches), slow motion for Julie's brain clot car crash, William Shatner is good if under-used as Julie's adopted father Earl, and the music score of Peter Manning Robinson uses a mournful vocal theme which is very effective but brief.