DAWN: PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGE RUNAWAY

year: 1976 cast: Eve Plumb rating: ***1/2

“I wish you were a radio,” says Dawn to a meddling parole officer, “so I could turn you off.” Well if you can survive a few bad lines like this you’ll do just fine, because this portrait is an entertaining made-for-TV movie where Eve Plumb… the troubled middle child Jan from THE BRADY BUNCH… makes a new life on the streets of Los Angeles.

On the bus ride we get flashes of her recent past: Although her suburban mom’s a neglectful drunk, there’s no worthy explanation to why a sweet blond-haired fifteen-year-old would make the leap from a small town to the big city, where Dawn wanders the sleazy streets and (way too soon) meets the young man of her dreams.

Enter Leigh McCloskey’s Alexander, a dreamy artist with dreams of making it out of the streets, providing a safety net but doesn’t make enough money for both to survive. Either way, Dawn winds up a hooker under pimp Bo Hopkins, seedy and loving it.

Although a 1970’s TV movie can’t do the subject matter justice, there’s no other decade worthy of such groovy melodrama, the marquee-laden streets of Hollywood Boulevard a character in itself.

As the story progresses, Alexander’s day job (a secret at first) as a male hustler is shown only in glimpses as Dawn’s nightlife gets distracted by parole officer Georg Stanford Brown teaming with Alexander to set things right, turning an edgy exploitation into an After School Special.

But there’s still an edge throughout: Hopkins makes a worthy antagonist while Plumb’s acting picks up the worse her life gets.

Leigh McCloskey shakes up Eve Plumb

Eve Plumb's Dawn takes the bus home