JOAN HACKETT

M1934 - 1983

“A Piano in the House”

            Joan Hacket, I believe, was fairly underrated and unheralded.  I suppose there were only so many roles she was truly right to play. There was a type of New England accent in her speech and her manner.  That is to say, she may have been more comfortable in another era.  You may remember her best for being the sister to Alex the cabbie on the long running television hit, “Taxi.”   She also does good work with George Segal in “The Terminal Man”, a science fiction thriller from 1974.  A kind of creepy movie, her work in it and my crush on the late Miss Hackett puts her at number nine.

          In “A Piano in the House”, Miss Hackett is wife, a pawn, and toy to a domineering critic and husband.  This is about personalities and self-esteem.  Each tune on a player piano brings out the true personalities of a select individual.  It is tame compared to all the other episodes mentioned here, but splendid drama and theater wrapped in industrial strength fabric from the Twilight Zone.  I fall in love with some faces and I will always be in love with the face of one Joan Hackett.

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