The Twisted Tale of the Real Life Inspiration for "Mother Knows Best"

As I said before, it amazes the hell out of me that people would be willing to pay to have someone knocked off. It's never chump change, either. Some people are insane enough to fork over loads of moolah just to have a person eliminated. And as I mentioned before in a previous story, the murder-for-hire stories I've heard about usually see women carry out these nefarious plans. The plot of the telefilm, Mother Knows Best, centered on a murder-for-hire scheme, and I had seen this film a few times. It's quite a delicious thriller, but I didn't know until about a few years ago that this was actually based on a true story.

Yeah, the film that I originally thought was your typical Lifetime-esque thriller (I did see this on Lifetime, but they actually took it from ABC) was actually a true crime story portrayed in a nice near 90-minute package. Before I talk about the movie, let's discuss the actual inspiration for this film.

This woman, who is probably in the Guinness Book of Records for "Longest Running Case of Resting Bitch Face," is Lee Goldsmith. Lee Goldsmith and her husband, Milt Goldsmith, served as the adoptive parents of Arleen Goldsmith, though by Arleen's own admission, it was a chilly relationship. Arleen never referred to her mom and dad as "Mom" and "Dad," and regarding Lee, she was one of those mothers. Nothing Arleen did was ever good enough for Lee, and Lee always had to be in control of every aspect of her daughter's life, including and especially her love life.

Desperate to get a husband for Arleen, Lee placed an ad in the local paper: "Nice Jewish Girl Wants to Meet Nice Jewish Boy." The ad was answered by David Brownstein, who was taken by Arleen, and vice versa. So the pair really loved each other, and all was well, right? Wrong? In a crazy twist of irony, Lee was not happy with David. Her main reason was that he wasn't "elite" enough for her liking; David had a job as an air conditioning auto repairman, and Lee wasted no time looking down at his profession and assuming that he was basically poor. Even David taking Arleen and her parents out to a lavish French restaurant wasn't good enough for Lee. David offered to foot the bill, and took out a $500 bill, and yes, those existed back then.

Lee's response: "He has to be a drug dealer. I was told by a bank that only drug dealers have bills that large."

Oh boy.

You know those text stories that have been popping up on YouTube since the height of the pandemic? Lee was basically like those evil mother-in-laws in those stories--looking down on those she thought she was better than, and resorting to all sorts of crazy things to manipulate Arleen into leaving David. Making up stories of being beaten and extorted by David only set off Arleen, who was dead set on marrying David, and was also carrying David's child. So Arleen was a married mother and living a happy life with David, and that just set Lee off. In February of 1989, Lee decided to plot to have David killed, and after asking a carpet cleaner where to find a hitman, a meeting took place with a man named Thomas Brennan. Lee's plan was simple: she promised a $10,000 payday to Brennan for the job, with $1,000 of that pay being up front. The madwoman wanted David shot in the head and drugs planted on him to make it look like a drug related murder.

Unbeknownst to Lee, the meeting was part of an undercover sting, and Brennan was actually a cop. He had informed David and Arleen about the scheme, and regarding Arleen, she was not surprised when she learned about her mother's evil plot. A week after the first meeting, Brennan met with Lee and informed her that David was "deceased," and Lee paid Brennan the remaining $9,000, while also cackling before responding to Brennan's statement about everyone being happy by saying, "Except the one in the morgue." As it turned out, Lee's evil bloodlust didn't end there, as she also informed Brennan that she wanted acid thrown on David's mother's face! Holy moley! Anyway, as Lee continued cackling like the maniacal witch she was, the jig was up, and police moved in on Lee and arrested her.

Lee's trial took place a year after the arrest, and she repeated her false story of being beaten by David, and Milton backed up Lee's story because, well, simps gotta simp. David denied even putting so much as a finger on his insane mother-in-law, and the trial ended with Lee convicted. It's amazing. At the time Lee carried out her evil plot, she was 67 years of age. She ended up serving 5 1/2 years in prison, and was released in June of 1995 at the age of 73.

Less than two years after Lee Goldsmith's release, ABC aired the telefilm based on the real-life crime, the aforementioned Mother Knows Best, on April 13, 1997. The names were changed big time, and the film starred Joanna Kerns as the evil Celeste Cooper, the villainess being based on Lee Goldsmith. Celeste's daughter, Laurel Cooper, was played by Christine Elise, who is best known by 90210 fans as Emily Valentine, and by fans of the Chucky film series as Kyle from the 1990 sequel--a role she reprised briefly in Cult of Chucky in 2017, and on the Chucky TV series as well. The renamed Ted Rogers (Laurel's eventual husband) was played by Grant Show, who is best known for being part of the cast of Melrose Place, and later playing Spence Westmore on Devious Maids, as well as Blake Carrington in the Dynasty reboot.

The movie was amazing as hell, and it was mainly due to Joanna Kerns' performance as main villainess Celeste. It was a hell of a leap for Kerns, as she was still known for playing Maggie Seaver on Growing Pains, so seeing her as an evil and unhinged villainess was absolutely delicious. Though the names of the characters were changed, everything from the actual real-life story was taken bit-by-bit, including the moment where Celeste cackles and repeats Lee's line about David. Fun fact, Kerns was actually just 12 years to the exact day older than Elise, and regarding Christine Elise, I could actually see her playing this exact type of villainess in a Lifetime movie.

Regarding Lee Goldsmith, she and her husband Milton appeared on A Current Affair and on Oprah, and was last interviewed back in 2009, when Lee was 86. Lee Goldsmith was quite the maniacal villainess; she was immensely arrogant and full of herself. She saw her daughter's husband as the lowest of lower class, totally disregarding Arleen's love and devotion to David in the process. She destroyed any chance she had of being an actual mother to Arleen, but despite this, she spent the rest of her life in deep denial, pretty much refusing to admit her criminal wrongdoing. In all, this was quite a twisted true crime story, and it ended up becoming one hell of a classic film that many Lifetime movie fans remember very well.