Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic

Trailer for the movie.

It's dull. Just like its star.

I prefer Dawn: Portrait Of a Teenage Runaway with Eve Plumb, or even the Charlene Tilton one about a teenage hitchhiker.

Special shoutout to Alexander: Portrait Of a Teenage (prostitute? Runway?)

r3 Neither Dawn nor Alexander would have been made if Sarah hadn't proven there was an audience for such scandalous teenage topics.

Sarah drank so Dawn could give blowjobs...

Sarah T. seems like the prototype for an After School Special.

When did After School Specials start being made?

She dazzled everyone at the teen drinking party with her rendition of Carole King's "It's too Late".

Is this where we talk about The ABC Movie of the Week?

R6 afterschool specials on ABC came first, by a few years.

Sarah T. Is from the golden age of young adult problem novels. Go Ask Alice, Lisa Bright and Dark, the Late Great Me, etc.

R3 He was the prime chicken of Selma Ave.

r8 Here's the link to talk about ABC movies of the week. But he warned, the hall monitor over there will only allow discussion of ABC movies of the week. Nothing from other networks.

I know I know

I was just stirrin’bup some trouble here🤕

Sarah and her dad went to see Earthquake at the Village Theater in Westwood.

I think it’s one of the best TV movies ever made and Linda Blair’s best performance.

Mark Hamill was impressive in it.

[quote]Sarah and her dad went to see Earthquake at the Village Theater in Westwood.

Sarah's dad snuck a six pack of beer into the theater.

Guess Sarah had been taking notes on how to be an alcoholic from him.

The Expendables is playing at the Village Westwood right now

It’s just such a treat to see anything made in the mid 70s.

[quote]I prefer Dawn: Portrait Of a Teenage Runaway with Eve Plumb, or even the Charlene Tilton one about a teenage hitchhiker.

[quote]Special shoutout to Alexander: Portrait Of a Teenage (prostitute? Runway?)

Name of that movie was Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn.

Blair's best performance by far was Born Innocent. I mean, how can you more realistically fake being raped with a broom handle?

Everyone talked about that scene the next day at school…but in whispers (jr. high)

R22 that scene caused a lawsuit to NBC when there was a copycat rape. As it turns out, the perpetrators didn't see the film but had heard about it from classmates. A lot of people who originally saw it think that penetration was shown, which of course is untrue. It remains one of the most horrific scenes ever on TV.

The tv movie about Cloris Leachman and her VD sounds like it would have been more entertaining , if only unintentionally so.

I remember Sarah T. ordering from the liquor store, then turning on the shower and when the deliveryman arrived she told him the order was for her mother, who was showering.

As a child I thought this brilliantly devious.

Yes, that was brilliant, r25

That scene certainly gave me ideas.

America's attitude toward teenage drinking was so much more relaxed in the 1970s than it is now. Teenage drinking wasn't that big a deal, especially if you were 16 and 17. Of course, in those days you could buy beer at age 18.

The death of her boyfriend’s horse was pretty sad. Mark Hamill was good in this.

Blair was no Lawson...

Honey, NO ONE is Lawson but Lawson!

Sarah T. certainly was on her way to being the 1990s version of Helen!

[quote]Sarah drank so Dawn could give blowjobs...

There's a scene toward the end of the film where Sarah likely would have given a blowjob to get some booze.

She gives some young 20somethings money to buy her booze, promising she'll do anything for them if they will buy it for her. They buy it but then drink most of the vodka themselves, taunting her with the bottle but initially keeping it away from her. Finally they give her the bottle. But if they'd demanded blowjobs, she was so desperate, Sarah likely would have performed.

R32, yes, Sarah was very much the gateway to oral sex on television. What Sarah started Eve finished and then swallowed.

Why did someone who starred in a big box office movie like the Exorcist do a made for TV movie two years later?

Because she was a shitty actress that no one wanted to hire.

It was a prestige project: an NBC special movie event. It turned out to be a fairly big deal at the time…setting up Sarah T. Blair had trouble leveraging off that for various reasons.

I remember Sarah T was a big event for students. I was in 8th grade when it aired. There were advance articles in the various magazines aimed at students. They really managed to hype it up into something important.

Our English teacher reminded us about the day it aired. We talked about it as a class the day after it aired.