Harper Valley PTA (film) - Plot

Plot

Stella Johnson (Barbara Eden) is a beautiful widowed single mother who lives in the town of Harper Valley, Ohio. She sells cosmetics door-to-door. Her fourteen-year-old daughter is named Dee (Susan Swift). Dee brings her mother a letter from the school's Parent Teacher Association board, which is led by the pompous and snobbish Flora Simpson Reilly (Audrey Christie). The letter denounces her for her not following the societal mores of the day and community and further stating that if she didn't change her ways more to their liking, Dee would be punished for her mother's sins by being expelled from school.

Infuriated by the board's supposed superiority and glaring hypocrisy, Stella storms to the PTA meeting and proceeds to tell most of the PTA members off by exposing their hidden skeletons for the town to see.

After her house is TP'ed, and a rock is thrown through her window in retaliation for what she did, Stella prepares to get even with those who would want her driven out of town. She teams up with her friends, beautician Alice Finley (Nanette Fabray) and bartender Herbie Maddox (Ron Masak) who, along with Dee's help, wreak hilarious and justified revenge on those PTA members who hated Stella. (Of Flora's allies, only two, Holly Taylor and Shirley Thompson, are spared any retribution.)

During the course of the movie, she finds out that one of the male PTA members, wealthy Willis Newton (Ronny Cox), has fallen in love with her.

Will, and another male on the PTA board, Skeeter Duggan (Bob Hastings), the town's Notary public, do not agree with Flora and her friends and are sympathetic to Stella. With Will's help, Stella goes ahead and makes a run for President of the PTA, which infuriates Flora and her allies.

After one of their own, real estate agent Kirby Baker (Louis Nye), is arrested for assaulting Myrna Wong (Irene Yah-Ling Sun), an Asian-American friend of Stella's, after he attempts to run Stella out of town by means of a foreclosure, things become more and more desperate. They finally decide to resort to criminal means to maintain the power they hold in town. The board members then decide to go and hire a couple of kidnappers named Dutch and Tex (Royce D. Applegate; J. J. Barry) to have Skeeter abducted so they can commit election fraud. The kidnappers snatch Skeeter as he is taking the trash out, and lock him in a monastery, where he is locked up and made drunk on wine. Eventually, Stella and Alice, disguised as nuns, find him, and free him.

After a makeover, which sees her braces removed and her hair styled, Dee also finds a boyfriend in handsome Carlyle (Brian Cook) a popular school track star, which incurs the jealousy of Bettina Reilly (Laura Tiege), the equally snobbish granddaughter of Flora. Also shown are Edwina, Bettina's twin sister (played by Jan Tiege, Laura's real life twin) and Dee's best friend, Mavis (Louise Foley), who, herself, becomes a target of the PTA's cruelty by being falsely accused of stealing money by Olive Glover (Molly Dodd), the PTA's corrupt recording secretary. Olive, who has a hardcore gambling addiction, has actually stolen money from the Milk Fund Rally, and intends to having Mavis framed for the crime and arrested.

Ultimately, Flora's scheme to discredit Stella fails. Olive is arrested for embezzlement. Dutch and Tex, already in custody for the Skeeter Duggan kidnapping, tell the police that Flora is behind it all to keep Stella off the PTA board.

Stella wins the election and becomes the new PTA president, with the whole town voting to get rid of Flora and her snobbish friends. Will and Stella fly off in his helicopter and marry.