A rare literary critique from Mr. Moore

In the past year, I've had the pleasure of watching the classic miniseries and the novel "Rich Man Poor Man". It's strange how I came upon it at all. My wife and I were watching "Any Which Way You Can", you know, a movie many consider to be in Clint Eastwood's low period (Clint and an ape sharing screen time is good evidence of that opinion!) However, his male co-star in the film, William Smith, did a good job playing Clint's fight opponent and eventual ally. I looked up Smith on Youtube and found some clips of him from this miniseries in 1976 playing a very menacing bad guy. In 2010 the miniseries came to DVD and soon after Netflix picked it up. We watched it over the course of several months, along with its lesser-quality sequel "Rich Man poor Man Book II", of which William Smith as evil Falconetti was the best thing about it. I bought the book "RMPM" and had a pretty good time over the Christmas holidays reading it. So, being the occasional literary critic, I decided to do a brief compare/contrast piece on characters.

In fact, the differences are MAINLY in characters.



1. Julie Prescott/Gretchen Jordache: In the book, there was no Julie Prescott. There WAS a Julie that Rudolph(Rudy) liked, but his young disinterest in love and romance prevented a future with her. Later, Rudolph met and married Jean Prescott when his business success was booming. She, like Julie in the miniseries , became an alcoholic coping with Rudy’s business and political successes. Jean, like Julie in the miniseries, does factor in to Tom’s murder.



Gretchen Jordache did not appear in the miniseries. She is the oldest of the Jordache children. She is the character that loses her virginity to Teddy Boylan, marries Willie Abbott, and has a child with Abbott named Billy. Subsequently, she divorces Willie, marries a screenwriter who later dies in a car accident, and then gets involved with another show-biz type. Being a Jordache, she endures a difficult adulthood as a result of being disowned by her mother Mary (father Axel Jordache for the most part disregards her presence). She is often cold, mean, yet vulnerable at all times. Brother Rudy bears her scorn and yet finds himself helping her when asked. He does so dutifully but without much love.



2. Falconetti: In the miniseries, Falconetti (no first name given) was a sadistic and tough sailor who intimidated almost all on the ship’s crew. Tom Jordache beat him in a fight and took his eye out. Falconetti was taken off the ship for medical attention. Later in the miniseries, he came back and, for some unexplained reason, targeted Julie Jordache for sexual assault (one could assume he did it to lure Tom in for the kill, though this cannot be proven). Tom, acting on a lead from a friend, finds Julie being molested by Falconetti and suffers some damage from a hammer before beating Falconetti. Tom decides not to kill the man, which turns out to be his undoing because after he is released from the doctor, he is blindsided by two thugs who stab him to death as Falconetti watches from the pier. In the novel, Falconetti is indeed the ship’s bully, and indeed Tom beats him up. However, his eye is not taken out. Tom proceeds to mildly humiliate him for a short time. Finally, Falconetti can take no more and he commits suicide by jumping into the sea. Tom is suspected of murdering him, but no charges are ever filed. In the end of the novel, a Yugoslav named Danovic plays the same role as Falconetti at the show’s end episode, right up to Tom’s death by hired thugs ( a theory of mine is that they changed Falconetti’s fate to cast him in the 2nd miniseries).



3. Teddy Boylan: Not much of a change occurs with this character, except that he sleeps with Gretchen in the book and not Julie. He is also more of a pervert in the book, as he takes Gretchen to a brothel for a session of voyeurism, which disgusts and arouses Gretchen at the same time. In the novel he also spends a lot of time with Rudy. He does this at first because he sees Rudy as a conduit to Gretchen, but later the time spent is altruistic (personally, I detected a hint of bisexuality in Teddy in the novel, but it was never acted on besides throwing a punch at a homosexual in a bar, perhaps to cover up). In the novel Teddy does not refer Rudy to Duncan Calderwood



4. Duncan Calderwood: Much the same in both medias, except that he plays more of a background role in the novel. It is stated that Rudy works for him at first for summer work while in the miniseries, Teddy Boylan referred Rudy to Calderwood.



5. Brad Knight: In the miniseries, he is Rudy’s friend and business partner. In the novel, his is more or less Rudy’s friend who turns out to be a poor businessman and crook that Rudy personally vilifies.



6. Willie Abbot: In the miniseries, he pursues Julie Prescott and marries her. They eventually divorce as a result of his drinking and adultery, and Rudy for all intents and purposes throws him out of town in exchange for money. Willie crashes his car in suicide. In the novel, he is married to Gretchen and they divorce, but the adultery is on both sides. He does not commit suicide, but disappears, assumably a drunken wreck.



7. Axel Jordache: the only real difference between the medias is that in the novel he defends Rudy from his French teacher while in the miniseries he defends Tom from the same teacher…a strange scene because in Axel’s other miniseries scenes, he is cruel and brutal toward Tom.



8. Professor Denton: In the miniseries, he is a professor that Rudy admires, but Rudy decides to protect his own interests instead of engaging in controversial political activities and testifying for Denton when he is accused of communism. The miniseries depicts Denton walking angrily away from Rudy after his rejection of help, hinting of possible suicide like other “red” targets. In the book, however, Denton moves to Europe to escape being targeted, but comes back with Rudy’s influence and support.



9. Rudy Jordache: the character development is basically the same. In the novel, he half-pursues a frustrated Julie who just wants him to finally bed her, loses his virginity to a lonely, vicious friend of Gretchen and Willie, then later pursues Jean Prescott and marries her. He becomes a successful businessman, and later mayor of Whitby and the father of two children with Jean. In the miniseries, he is obsessed with Julie Prescott and keeps pursuing her, but once they marry, he all but ignores her in his senatorial race. In both media, he is a shrewd businessman.

10. Tom Jordache: once again, mostly the same in both media in terms of character growth. In the book, he is kicked out of town for the cross at Teddy Boylan’s place and lives with his uncle. However, he does not meet Teresa there. Their meeting isn’t really explained, just that he married her at some point and had Wesley. His contempt for Rudy in the book is larger than that for Gretchen, and he doesn’t fully make peace with his brother until toward the end of the book. Also, his downfall in the boxing world in the novel is due to him being drawn to the good life in Europe, and therefore losing a fight he could have won easily. In the miniseries he threw it all away to find his son Wesley.



Overall, the producers of the miniseries had to make adjustments to the story, just like any adaptation. After being exposed to the story both ways, I prefer the presentation of the miniseries, simply because the story flows better, and there is more of a balance between Rudy’s and Tom’s stories. The book made Tom’s life a bit confusing as to why he ended up in the places he did. In the end, both media present a good story, and a classic dysfunctional family if I ever saw one!

Perhaps one day I'll consider doing a piece on "Fletch".....no, that'd be insulting the books.