Lord Love a Duck

From his prison cell, Roddy McDowall as Alan Musgrave narrates the year he spent shaping the life of Barbara Ann Greene [Tuesday Weld], the high school senior who is the daughter of Marie [Lola Albright], a cocktail waitress sinking into her forties, and who longs for every kind of success and to be loved by all.

Barbara Ann signs a pact sealed in wet cement with Alan, quickly gathering 12 cashmere sweaters to join an exclusive girls’ club. She drops out of school to become the principal’s secretary and gets involved in church activities run by Bob Bernard [Martin West], whose mother Stella Bernard [Ruth Gordon] disapproves and is perpetually drunk.

When Barbara Ann decides Bob should be her husband, Alan facilitates this by keeping Bob’s eccentric mother Stella drunk.

Stella pays Barbara Ann a surprise visit, while Marie reveals details that contradict what Stella learned previously. Feeling worthless and like an embarrassment to her daughter, Marie commits suicide—though Alan arranges the scene to appear like an accident for life insurance purposes.

With Marie dead, Bob marries Barbara Ann. Then she meets producer T. Harrison Belmont [Martin Gabel], the King of Beach Party Films, and decides to become the biggest star that ever was.

Bob refuses to allow his wife to have a Hollywood screen test, so Barbara Ann decides she wants a divorce.

Since Bob’s mother frowns upon divorce, Alan takes matters into his own hands to kill Bob. Although Bob proves to be almost indestructible—after several failed attempts ranging from arsenic and belladonna (a.k.a. deadly nightshade) poisoning to a deconstructed automobile and a skateboard slip-and-fall—by graduation time Alan has him in a wheelchair.

At the graduation ceremony, Alan pursues Bob with an excavator, apparently killing him and several people on the speakers’ platform. Barbara Ann goes on to Hollywood fame in Bikini Widow, while Alan is sent to prison, dictating that he did it all for love.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 12:34