TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=92TT0937> <title> Apr. 27, 1992: Reviews:Television </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992 Apr. 27, 1992 The Untold Story of Pan Am 103 </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> REVIEWS, Page 64 TELEVISION Upscale and Uplifting </hdr><body> By Richard Zoglin <qt> <l>SHOW: Hallmark Hall of Fame</l> <l>TIME: Sunday, 9 P.M. EDT, NBC, and Before Card-Buying</l> <l>Holidays Every Year</l> </qt> 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? </body></article> </text>