Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate

Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate^[1] is a 1971 television movie directed by Ted Post, starring Helen Hayes, Mildred Natwick, Myrna Loy and Sylvia Sidney, adapted from a novel of the same name by Doris Miles Disney. It premiered on ABC on November 9, 1971. Both the novel and film are noteworthy as a pre-World Wide Web foray into the idea of virtual reality.

Plot

Four elderly women amuse themselves by creating a fictitious profile of a young woman and submitting it to a computer dating service. Trouble ensues when a psychotic killer falls for the profile and begins searching for the girl.

Cast

• Helen Hayes as Sophie Tate Curtis
• Vince Edwards as Mal Weston
• Myrna Loy as Evelyn Tryon
• Mildred Natwick as Shelby Saunders
• Sylvia Sidney as Elizabeth Gibson
• John Beradino as Det. Hallum
• Larry D. Mann as Sgt. Lutz
• Barbara Davis as Brenda
• Paul Smith as Cutler
• Gary Vinson as Jonas
• Diane Shalet as Ruth Mellon
• Nora Denney as Trudy
• Patrecia Wynand as the Hostess
• Leonidas Ossetynski as the Florist
• John Mitchum as Mr. Tubbs

See also

• The Snoop Sisters
• List of television films produced for American Broadcasting Company

Notes and References

1. ^ By the 1950s, the IBM punched card had become ubiquitous in industry and government. "Do not fold, spindle or mutilate," a generalized version of the warning that appeared on some punched cards (generally on those distributed as paper documents to be later returned for further machine processing, checks for example), became a motto for the post-World War II era (even though many people had no idea what spindle meant)

"Spindle" refers to a pointed vertical metal pin on a weighted base that many office workers utilized on their desks to hold stray notes and documents; the sheets of paper would be "skewered" on the pin to form a stacked bundle of pierced pages. This device is less in use nowadays because of the injury hazard presented by the sharpened tip.

External links

• Do Not Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate at the Internet Movie Database