Soft porn star searches for her identity

Press, 28 January 1986, Page 15

Soft porn star searches for her identity

Television has been responsible for coining many phrases (who can forget Basil Brush’s “Boom, Boom” or Fred Dagg’s “Gidday”), and one of the , Summer Season’s mini-series, “Lace,” also has a couple of phrases destined to become part of television history.

In part one, the heroine, porn queen Lili (Phoebe Cates), poses the question . . . “Which one of you bitches is my mother?”

And in part two (“Lace II”) she asks . . . “Which one of those bastards is my father?” Out of context, they are not really acceptable for the drawing room, but since they are the themes around which this tale is woven, they prove, in their theatrical context, to be unforgettable! The answers are guaranteed to keep viewers mystified during the next four days. “Lace,” which screens on Two this evening and

tomorrow evening, is based on Shirley Conran’s runaway international bestseller of the same name. Translated into 13 languages, "Lace” recorded more than 100,000 hardcover sales and the paperback print run numbered more than two million.

"Lace” tells the story of three friends in a Swiss finishing school — Judy, Pagan and Maxine. One of the girls gets pregnant and the trio swear never to reveal her identity. The resulting child, Lili, is placed in a foster home and the friends resolve that one of them will claim her when financially secure. But the little girl grows up alone, and after her harrowing early years become an international soft porn movie star who decides to seek her origins. “Lace” boasts a starstudded supporting cast featuring Herbert Lorn, Anthony Quayle, Honor Blackman, Leigh Lawson,

Anthony Higgins and Angela Lansbury. The phenomenal success of “Lace” — it was the most successful miniseries of the 1983-84 American season with a viewing audience of almost 65 million — led the producers, Lorimar, to develop a sequel. With the consent of Shirley Conran, the scriptwriter Elliott Wanted to be nicer Phoebe Cates did not exactly jump at the chance of the lead role in “Lace.” The idea of playing Lili, a porno queen seeking revenge against her long-lost mother, did not really appeal. “I didn’t think I could bring myself to play such a horrid person,” she says. “The challenge was to find a more humane side to her character.”

Baker began work on a totally new story based on characters Conran created in the novel. The sequel, “Lace II,” screening on Thursday and Friday on Two, sees the infamous Lili digging up the skeletons in the family closet yet again — this time the questions are about her father.