by Eric Gerber, Houston Post, Sept. 24, 1991
WHEN HOMEFRONT premieres tonight, the post-World War II series will take place in the fictional Ohio town of River Run. But don’t you believe it. That’s really Conroe, folks.
Or very well could be.
Lynn Latham, Homefront’s co-creator, grew up in the small town just north of Houston and drew on her memories of war brides who settled in that area as the inspiration for the new ABC series.
It debuts with a special 90-minute episode at 8:30 p.m. on Channel 13.
“My best friend’s mom – Jeanne Seniff was from Brussels,” recalled Latham. “There was a seamstress in town who was an Italian war bride. And my next-door neighbor was a German war bride. Growing up in Conroe in the ’50s and ’60s, which had about 9,000 people, I was fascinated by that.”
Decades later, Latham’s childhood fascination served as the impetus for a slickly mounted, emotionally engaging series that tries to look at America redefining itself in the wake of World War II.
In this opening installment, Homefront focuses on four GIs coming back home and the readjustments awaiting them and those they left behind. For instance, Hank (David Newsom) has plans to marry girlfriend Sarah (Alexandra Wilson), but she’s fallen in love with his younger brother Jeff (Kyle Chandler). And two of his comrades are returning from overseas with new brides – one Italian (Giuliana Santini), one British (Sammi Davis-Voss). Which means two former sweethearts are awaiting their arrival with surprise and outrage.
One of them, Linda (Jessica Steen), is even more upset that she’s being fired from her wartime job as a welder at the town’s big factory to make room for the returning GIs.
Hoping to land one of those new jobs is Robert (Sterling Macer Jr.), a highly decorated black soldier who discovers that what awaits him – despite the glowing predictions of his chauffeur father – is a janitor’s broom.
Despite its obvious WW II foundations, Homefront isn’t intended strictly as an exercise in post-war nostalgia, Latham said.
“Nostalgia is all optimism and romance. This will play out on a larger canvas – as a general drama set in the late ’40s, period. When the war was over, everybody was in a terrible rush to get on with living. People were trying to jump-start their lives.”
Latham, who was graduated as valedictorian from Conroe High School in 1967 then took a degree in film from the University of Texas, kept her interest in the war bride phenomenon on a back burner as she pursued a magazine career in Manhattan, then moved to Los Angeles to work in TV. In time, she worked her way up to executive story editor for Knots Landing, then served as producer for the popular CBS prime-time soap opera for the past three seasons. She (and husband/collaborator Bernard Lechowick) left that series once their own show, Homefront, was picked up by ABC.
Originally, Latham had plans to turn the reminiscences of her Belgian war bride neighbor into a novel, even returning to Conroe during the mid-1980s for some taping sessions with her.
However, with the writers’ strike putting TV production on hold, Latham used the time to fashion her considerable notes – plus voluminous material supplied by a research assistant – into a possible TV series based on that era and those circumstances.
Pretty soon, she was calling on her parents – John and Jean Latham, who still live in Conroe – to help fill in the sort of details that give Homefront its historical accuracy.
“For instance, I found myself phoning my father one night to ask how available prophylactics were right after the war,” she recalled.
ABC’s decision to launch Homefront raised some eyebrows in the TV industry. For one thing, such shows are traditionally more expensive to produce – and TV has been in an economic downturn for the past few years.
“Yes,” Latham conceded, “it used to be pretty well accepted that doing a period piece like this can cost twice as much to make. But so far we’ve been able to do this for just about what a conventional series would cost.”
Expense aside, even more surprising is ABC’s decision to air another dramatic series at all – particularly one with a wartime theme. This is the network, you’ll remember, which just pulled the plug on China Beach and thirty-something. And entertainment chief Bob Iger recently declared the remote control was driving nails in the dramatic form’s coffin, with viewers impatiently zapping away from serious shows.
But Homefront’s ensemble cast and multiple story lines apparently gave Iger confidence the series could avoid the dreaded zap-trap, and Latham agrees that the key to the new show’s success, as with Knots Landing, will be its variety.
In the meantime, Latham is busy living in the past, writing scripts for more stories about post-WW II life in Conroe. Oops – make that River Run, Ohio.
“My husband’s from Ohio and we thought that might offer more of a generalized, mid-America feel,” Latham said of the switch.
“Besides, with Dallas still so fresh in people’s minds, the network thought another Texas locale so soon might be a little too much for viewers to handle.”