The Haunting True Story Behind Woman Of The Hour

By Olivia Emily

2 months ago

Anna Kendrick’s new drama is streaming now on Netflix

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Anna Kendrick is trying her hand at directing in Woman of the Hour, a brand new crime thriller streaming now on Netflix. With big hair, flamboyant suits and shirts and a contemporary mustard-hued set and arm chairs to match, the film whisks us back to 1978 when Cheryl Bradshaw appeared on The Dating Game, on the hunt for her dream man. But he’d turn out to be pretty nightmarish… Here’s what you need to know.

Tony Hale as Ed and Anna Kendrick as Sheryl in Woman of the Hour

What Is Woman Of The Hour About?

Woman of the Hour tells the story of serial killer Rodney Alcala from the perspective of a near-miss victim, Cheryl Bradshaw. In 1978, aspiring actor Cheryl (or ‘Sheryl’ in the film) goes on The Dating Game and is presented with three eligible bachelors, one of which being Alcala. In the midst of a murder spree, Alcala answers Cheryl’s blind questions compellingly, and charms her into being selected as her match.

Is Woman Of The Hour Based On A True Story?

Yes, Woman of the Hour is based on real people and a real ‘70s dating show, The Dating Game. The show ran sporadically throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, featuring a star-studded collection of celebrities before they were famous (from Farrah Fawcett to Arnold Schwarznegger) and some even after they were in the public eye, including a young Michael Jackson. But a real standout moment came in 1978: Rodney Alcala starred on the show, in the midst of his serial killing spree.

Perhaps it goes without saying Alcala had not yet been convicted of the pattern of murders across California that would eventually be his downfall. He had, however, been convicted of child molestation and assault on separate occasions, serving time in prison for both. In 1971, he was even on the FBI’s ‘Ten Most Wanted Fugitives’ list after violently assaulting an eight-year-old girl and fleeing. Different times (or poor due diligence) aside, Alcala signed up and was welcomed onto The Dating Game. By this time, he had murdered at least three women – 23-year-old Cornelia Crilley in 1971, 18-year-old Jill Terry Barcomb in 1977 and 27-year-old Georgia Marie Wixted one month later – possibly killed two more (28-year-old Christine Thornton in June 1977 and 19-year-old Pamela Lambson in 1977) and had violently assaulted many others.

By day, Alcala was posing as a photographer. Indeed, this is how he lured many of his victims – snapping images of young aspiring models. At the time of The Dating Game, Alcala was working at the Los Angeles Times as a typesetter, convincing hundreds of young men and women he was a professional fashion photographer and taking photos of them for his ‘portfolio’. To be clear, Alcala wasn’t exactly secretive about his perversions: he shared these photos with his colleagues at the Times, as well as his subjects. People have come forward to say they thought he was ‘weird’, but because he claimed to be a professional, no one took it any further.

Anna Kendrick as Sheryl, Matt Visser as Bachelor #1 (Josh), Jedidiah Goodacre as Bachelor #2 (Arnie) and Daniel Zovatto as Rodney in Woman of the Hour.

These ‘weird’ allegations would resurface on The Dating Game. At the centre of the episode was bachelorette Cheryl Bradshaw (Kendrick’s character in Woman of the Hour), a drama teacher. The premise of The Dating Game is that the bachelorette asks three bachelors questions while they are hidden from view. She then picks her favourite and the two go on a date, with expenses paid for by the show. In Cheryl’s episode, one such bachelor was Alcala, who was introduced by host Jim Lange (recharacterised as Ed Burke in the film, played by Tony Hale) as a ‘successful photographer’ who enjoys skydiving and motorcycling. One of the two players he was up against later described Alcala as a ‘very strange guy’ with ‘bizarre opinions’, while the third, Jed Mills, says ‘he was creepy. Definitely creepy’. ‘Something about him, I could not be near him,’ Mills recalled. ‘I am kind of bending toward the other guy to get away from him, and I don’t know if I did that consciously. But thinking back on that, I probably did.’ But Alcala must have been something of a smooth talker: he won the game, bagging a date with Cheryl.

When Alcala was revealed and Cheryl spoke to him away from the cameras, she refused to go on a date with him because she found him ‘creepy’. ‘I started to feel ill,’ she said in 2012. ‘He was acting really creepy.’ She even went so far as to call one of the producers on The Dating Game, Mike Metzger, saying: ‘There’s weird vibes that are coming off of him. He’s very strange. I am not comfortable. Is that going to be a problem?’ Luckily for her, the producer said it was fine to turn him down and not go on the date.

In retrospect, criminal profilers suspect this was a catalyst for Alcala’s next three kills – 31-year-old Charlotte Lee Lamb in 1978, 21-year-old Jill Marie Parenteau in 1979, and 12-year-old Robin Chistine Samsoe one week later – as well as the violent sustained assault of hitchhiker Monique Hoyt.

‘One wonders what that [Cheryl’s rejection] did in his mind,’ criminal profiler Pat Brown mused later. ‘That is something he would not take too well. Psychopaths don’t understand the rejection. They think that something is wrong with that girl: “She played me. She played hard to get. She wanted to live.”’

Daniel Zovatto as Rodney, Anna Kendrick as Sheryl and Tony Hale as Ed in Woman of the Hour

When Alcala was finally captured and convicted in 1979 after Samsoe’s murder, his appearance on The Dating Game came to light, earning the nickname ‘Dating Game Killer’. Before he died (of natural causes) in 2021, he had been convicted of seven murders. Screenwriter McDonald was inspired by Alcala’s story after stumbling across it on a true crime website, with a screenplay completed as early as 2017. ‘The context around him was the thing that I found really interesting,’ McDonald says. ‘He seemed to represent something that we were kind of wrestling with as a country at the time, which is ordinary people looking the other way so that bad people could get away with bad behaviour.

‘In true crime circles you’ll sometimes hear people say, “Oh yeah, he’s kind of like Ted Bundy”,’ McDonald continues. ‘But the truth of the matter is, he’s kind of the opposite. Ted Bundy was a chameleon. He was really good at pretending to be something he wasn’t. And Rodney Alcala really seems to have flouted a lot of his worst tendencies. It wasn’t that he was being sneaky, it’s that other people were kind of actively looking the other way.’

Naturally, much of the story behind Woman of the Hour is dramatised and expanded for the film. ‘The full episode of The Dating Game seems like it’s been kind of lost to time,’ Kendrick tells Netflix. ‘I would say that the majority of [research] was my Newspapers.com subscription.’