![]() ![]() When she learns that the police intend to charge Sarah with child abandonment and attempted murder, Mother (Mary Steenburgen) intervenes and takes both Sarah and her child into the home, despite Father's objections. ![]() The child's mother, an unmarried washerwoman named Sarah (Debbie Allen), is discovered, and brought to their home. Their passive, sheltered existence is disturbed when an abandoned African American baby is found in their garden. The family's Father (James Olson) owns a factory, where his wife's Younger Brother (Brad Dourif) is employed as a fireworks maker. ![]() Thaw surrenders to the police without attempting to run.Meanwhile, an unnamed upper class family resides in a comfortable suburban home in New Rochelle. On the evening of June 25, 1906, Thaw confronts and publicly shoots White during a show at Madison Square Garden, killing him in cold blood before several witnesses. Thaw becomes convinced White has corrupted Evelyn and humiliated him. The model for the statue is Evelyn Nesbit (Elizabeth McGovern), a former chorus girl who is now Thaw's wife. Rollins, Jr.).The millionaire industrialist Harry Kendall Thaw (Robert Joy) makes a scene when White's latest creation, a nude statue on the roof of Madison Square Garden, is unveiled. The newsreel is accompanied by ragtime pianist Coalhouse Walker, Jr. An ornate misfire, Ragtime is of interest today only for its remarkable cast of veterans and stars-to-be, including Pat O'Brien and Eloise O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Allen, Moses Gunn, Jeff Daniels and Fran Drescher.The film begins with a newsreel montage, depicting celebrities of the turn of the 20th century such as Harry Houdini, Theodore Roosevelt and the architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer), as well as life in New York City. Another detriment is the gratuitous (and illogical) nudity in the Evelyn Nesbit scenes, which earned the film its R rating. The problem is that Cagney's character (a police commissioner) isn't in the book, and his inclusion not only throws the story off balance, but necessitates the removal of several potentially interesting characters and events. Back in 1981, Ragtime was given plenty of press coverage as the comeback picture for James Cagney, after twenty years in retirement. There are also several scenes involving an unnamed upper-middle-class family (headed by James Olson and Mary Steenburgen) who are evidently meant to be the audience's eyes and ears, but are frankly not terribly interesting. This last subplot consumes most of the film's running time, to the overall detriment of the pacing. Thaw (Robert Joy) kills architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer) and a lone black man's (Howard Rollins Jr.) quest for justice when his car is destroyed by a racist fire chief (Kenneth McMillan). Both characters are all but eliminated in the film version, which only concentrates on three of Doctorow's many plot threads: The story of an immigrant artist (Mandy Patinkin) who becomes a movie director the saga of Gibson Girl Evelyn Nesbit Shaw (Elizabeth McGovern), for whose sake playboy Harry K. Among the mosaic of colorful factual and fictional characters in the novel were escape artist Harry Houdini and radical Emma Goldman. Doctorow's novel Ragtime was a sprawling fictional account of American manners and mores in the years between 19.
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