Family Business (1983)

Based on Dick Goldberg's play, the made-for-TV Family Business stars Milton Berle as wealthy, truculent and dying toy manufacturer Isaiah Stern. Once more Stern has gathered together his grown sons to once more revise his will. Three of the four boys are used to these idiosyncratic changes, and have come to accept them: the fourth son (David Rosenbaum), a married psychologist, is heavily in debt and doesn't like his thin share of the pie, which sparks the play's second act confrontation. The remaining sons, for the record, are a bachelor who runs the family store (Richard Greene), an indecisive sort who still lives at home (David Garfield), and daddy's favorite, a closet homosexual (Jeffrey Marcus). Milton Berle, whose skills as a straight actor should be a "given" by now, is as brilliant as ever in this 1983 PBS American Playhouse presentation. Also in the cast is Brian Benben, billed curiously as Ben-Ben. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi