Almanac Film and TV: Shelley Long – a Modern Anti-Hero

 

 

Shelley Long -Publicity shot for Cheers (Public Domain – Wikipedia)

 

 

I would like to pay tribute to that most fascinating of actresses, Shelley Long. She plays villainesses, but not in the Sharon Stone or Joan Collins way. She is not a femme fatale like the immortal Barbara Stanwyck.

 

In her roles she is a good person, a flawed tragic messy sort of person. But her characters are a human equivalent of fingernails down a blackboard.

 

In Australia we are used to this sort of thing with the procession of old bags such as Dorrie Evans (Pat Bishop) in Number 96 and Mrs Jessop (Vivian Grey) in The Sullivans.

 

England had its battleaxes such as Peggy Mount and Penelope Keith. But Shelley Long is unique. She wasn’t scary like the battleaxes, and she was much younger and more attractive than the old bags. But she was just as annoying as all of them.

 

 

 

 

In Cheers (1982- 1993), she plays Diane Chambers the girlfriend of Sam Malone the bartender. But what is this? Theirs is a tragic love story in an era of the Love Boat and Family Ties. Cheers shows how two people can be madly attracted to each other even though they have nothing in common. The relationship fails many times and finally, in the last episode of Cheers, they come together and agree to separate for the last time. Sam goes back to his bar, and Dianne becomes a writer and leaves Cheers for good.

 

Moonlighting, starring Bruce Willis and Sybil Shephard came three years after, another on again, off again romance between two headstrong people, possibly got its inspiration from Sam and Dianne. Cheers made it ok for TV romances to fail.

 

In the meantime, Dianne flaunts her knowledge over the bar patrons. She has insights into such things as My Dinner with Andre, 1981, a film many people know about but very few have seen. She knows stuff that the bar know-all, Cliff, doesn’t.

 

“Her speech is vintage Diane, pinballing between pompous talk of Greek gods, environmentalist concerns, her parents’ ingrained misogyny, and Sylvia Plath. “Your tragic story will be my next project,” she declares. “ (from Randall Colburn Entertainment Weekly 21/5/2025). Lucky Sylvia.

 

In The Brady Bunch Movie Shelley takes on the role of America’s sweetheart Carol Brady. She plays her straight in an obvious spoof of the original TV series but there is something off about her: “Oh Mr Brady”.

 

 

 

 

In Night Shift, 1982, with Henry Winkler, Shelley plays it straight again. She plays a sex worker and Henry becomes her pimp, offering Shelley and her fellow working girls the chance to earn more money, using his workplace at the morgue as cover. I was struck with the image of these two wounded birds, trying to deal with forces well beyond their control. Fortunately, the film was American, not French so our unhappy duo is not shot, but leave the past behind them, together.

 

In Modern Family, (2009-2020), Shelley’s character Didi takes feminist icon Gloria Pritchard, played by Sofia Vergara, head on. Gloria is nominated by feminist TV review The Take as the second wife who finally has her voice. Gloria is attractive, stubborn, dynamic and determined. She has a positive and loving relationship with her husband and her sons, albeit quarrelsome, and a respectful relationship with her step daughter, who is the same age. When the boys are dithering about an intrusive drone, Gloria gets her gun and shoots it. Gloria is afraid of no one, except Didi.

 

Didi destroys Gloria’s wedding. Didi physically attacks her, and trashes her verbally whenever possible. When Gloria becomes pregnant Didi forgives her and lashes out at Jay, Gloria’s husband and Didi’s ex, claiming he was a lousy parent. As someone said in the YouTube comments – some people are hurricanes. Didi is constantly seeking peace and tranquillity but changes in a moment when life as she sees it becomes too much.

 

So, what do we learn from this. Sheldon Cooper, George Costanza, Arthur Spooner from King of Queens – some of the most annoying and repellent characters in television ever created, and, like Heathcliff and William Collins of old, they would be hell to know personally. But Shelley Long asks us, why should the boys have all the fun, she and those after her, like Julia Louis-Dreyfusand Magda Szubanski, created a dynasty of obnoxious anti heroines. And about the same time women’s lives in film were changing. Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton in 9 to 5, 1980, and Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, 1988, discovered that Prince Charming was a job.

 

As the critics say very few of us will storm a building, but everyone knows a person like those Shelley portrays. If anyone remembers other characters that Shelley Long portrayed, I would love to hear it.

 

 

More from George Smith Here

 

 

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