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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1992-09-10
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REVIEWS, Page 64TELEVISIONUpscale and Uplifting
By RICHARD ZOGLIN
SHOW: Hallmark Hall of Fame
TIME: Sunday, 9 P.M. EDT, NBC, and Before Card-Buying
Holidays Every Year
THE BOTTOM LINE: A wholesome anachronism, but it scores
high on quality and -- surprise! -- in the ratings too.
Willa Cather's 1913 novel O Pioneers! is a lyrical, almost
mystically placid story of the Nebraska frontier, which might
seem an unlikely candidate for prime-time success. But when a
TV-movie version starring Jessica Lange ran on cbs in February,
it beat Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the ratings.
Sarah, Plain and Tall, a children's story about a Kansas farmer
who finds a mail-order wife to take care of his kids, won a John
Newbery Medal for outstanding children's literature in 1986. But
who would have guessed that a TV adaptation, starring Glenn
Close and Christopher Walken, would be a prime-time smash -- and
garner nine Emmy nominations?
So one shouldn't be surprised that next Sunday nbc will
air a TV movie based on a relatively obscure off-Broadway play, A
Shayna Maidel, about a Polish immigrant to America who is
reunited with her sister after World War II. To be sure, some
shrewd alterations have been made. The title has been changed to
the more ethnically acceptable Miss Rose White. The play has
been fleshed out and given a glowing production under Joseph
Sargent's direction. And it is enacted by a classy cast that
includes Maximilian Schell, Maureen Stapleton, Amanda Plummer
and Kyra Sedgwick.
In other words, like O Pioneers! and Sarah, Plain and
Tall, it has received the Hallmark treatment.
The Hallmark Hall of Fame is one of the pleasant
anachronisms of network TV. Nearly all of the old single-sponsor
dramatic series from TV's Golden Age are long gone. But the
Kansas City-based greeting-card company continues to craft four
or five TV movies a year -- which usually air just before
card-buying holidays like Christmas, Valentine's Day and
Mother's Day. Most current TV movies thrive on true-crime
docudrama or soap-opera escapism. But Hallmark persists in doing
upscale literary adaptations and sober period pieces. What's
more, its programs nearly always attract big audiences. O
Pioneers! was the second most watched show for the week it
aired. Sarah, Plain and Tall was the highest-rated TV movie of
the 1990-91 season.
Hallmark is in the full bloom of what might be called its
second life. During the 1950s and early '60s, the company
concentrated on prestigious live productions of such works as
Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors and Victoria
Regina, starring Julie Harris as the British Queen, along with
numerous Shakespeare plays. "We were convinced," Hallmark
founder Joyce C. Hall once said, "that the average American did
not have the mind of a 12-year-old." During the 1970s, however,
Hallmark seemed to be casting about for a role (and better time
slots) and in 1979 severed its longtime exclusive relationship
with NBC.
In the past few years, Hallmark seems to have been
rejuvenated. Its projects are more eclectic, ranging from
inwartime dramas (The Tenth Man) to tony mysteries (Caroline?).
Yet its signature remains the wholesome, uplifting family drama,
epitomized by such Emmy-honored films as Promise (in which James
Garner portrays a man taking care of his schizophrenic brother)
and Love Is Never Silent (featuring Mare Winningham as a woman
with deaf parents). These shows make an ideal companion for
Hallmark's equally wholesome, Norman Rockwell-like com mercials.
"The whole purpose of the Hallmark Hall of Fame," says Brad
Moore, vice president of advertising and production, "is to
equate Hallmark with quality and good taste."
Sometimes it turns out to be Quality rather than quality.
O Pioneers!, for example, was an earnest but tinny effort to
translate Cather's poetic novel to the small screen. And when
Hallmark departs from form -- as in last season's misguided
remake of Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, starring Mark Harmon
-- the results can be as clunky as any hack-of-the-week TV
movie.
Miss Rose White, happily, is in the pure Hallmark
tradition. It focuses on Rayzel Weiss, a Jewish immigrant in
postwar New York City who has taken the name Rose White to speed
her assimilation. Her life is thrown awry by the surprise
appearance of her older sister, a survivor of the concentration
camps. Barbara Lebow's play has been deftly opened up: we now
see Rose's working life, which adds dimension to the play's
central conflicts between present and past, assimilation and
family loyalty. The cast, as usual with Hallmark, is
exceptional, particularly Sedgwick, wonderfully warm and
accessible as Rose, and Schell, a commanding presence as her Old
World father.
Topflight stars, writers and producers are attracted to
Hallmark by its reputation for excellence and the care it
lavishes on its productions. (The typical Hallmark movie costs
between $3.8 million and $4 million, compared with a TV average
of $2.8 million.) "The play to them is the thing," says Marian
Rees, who has produced nine Hallmark dramas, including Miss Rose
White. "They really get very committed to the material." Anne
Tyler has agreed to let Hallmark produce a TV version of her
Pulitzer-prizewinning novel Breathing Lessons, and August Wilson
is writing an adaptation of his play The Piano Lesson, also a
Pulitzer winner. Another pair of unlikely ventures for
prime-time TV, but with Hallmark's golden touch, how can they
miss?