Los Angeles – What a long, strange trip back to the 1940s it is for the producers of Homefront.
The sudsy ABC drama set in a small, Ohio town after WWII has won critical acclaim and eight Emmy nominations. The lush period piece has the largest concentration of female viewers ages 18 to 49 of any current show on television.
Homefront hopes to win more fans with a “lost” episode that’s as powerful and resonant as anything last season.
Originally, network excutives said this show about the funeral of a dead GI was too heavy to air as the series’ second episode last fall. They were wrong. The show balances intense poignance and Hattie Winston’s impressive a capella rendition of the spiritual Precious Lord Take My Hand with a wickedly funny subplot about the GI’s last wish.
You’d never know from looking at this show, but the visual tricks and imagination that husband-and-wife creators Bernard Lechowick and Lynn Marie Latham need to sell the illusion of 1946 River Run, Ohio, are considerable in 1992 Southern California.
For instance: At the end of an otherwise Western street on the backlot of Lorimar Studios, the tall, athletic Lechowick stands in front of what passes on the show for 74,000-seat Cleveland Stadium – where boyish Jeff Metcalf (Kyle Chandler) plays baseball for the Indians.
Homefront couldn’t film in the real home of Chief Wahoo because of the expense and the changing of some features since 1946. So the show’s “stadium” is one especially built section of seats much smaller than the typical reviewing stand for the 500 Festival Parade.
The illusion of size comes from creative camera work and small details such as the section’s grimy institutional green paint and the massive girders of “steel” (actually fake ones of wood) beside some seats. They trick viewers into imagining a roof. Many team scenes are played out on the bus, the locker room and the dugout – all much easier to re-create on soundstages.
“All we do is juggle the pieces,” jokes Lechowick, who grew up near Cleveland and attended the University of Notre Dame.
But what pieces they are. The meticulously accurate Homefront sets – where Lebanon native and Indiana University graduate Linda Rockstroh, a first assistant director, barks out “Stand by for picture!” and “Roll, please!” – are filled with period clothes, furniture and bygone products culled from garage sales and secondhand stores.
Brilliantine hair tonic and Drain-Flo (“Safe! Non-poisonous! Fast-Acting!”) sit on a bathroom counter. Elsewhere, counters hold Tube City beer, Star Bright coffee and Watkins red polish.
For a thirtysomething reporter, walking through the Metcalf kitchen is like stepping instantly through time to his grandmother’s kitchen in rural America.
The trip down memory lane continues in Homefront’s executive offices, where staffers wear ‘40s silk ties, might have an empty carton of Bing Crosby Vanilla Ice Cream on a desk, or add the picture of Latham’s mother – who modeled during this period – to a Look magazine cover (price: 10 cents).
(The one office not sporting much memorabilia belongs to two twin sisters from Indianapolis. North Central High School graduate Maria Green did the research for the original Homefront pilot – which is up for an Emmy for best TV movie – and is now associate producer. Sister Sylvia, who graduated from North Central and Ball State University, also works on the show.)
During Homefront’s first season, which was set in 1945, Latham and Lechowick had pleasant surprises for themselves and viewers. The ongoing romance of Chandler’s Jeff and Tammy Lauren’s radio receptionist Ginger Szabo – a comic, sexy storyline that could have been plucked from a Cary Grant movie – was originally slated to last only three episodes, until the actors’ chemistry bowled over producers and fans alike.
Chandler says he owes his skill with the material and period to Ted Turner’s WTBS. The station broadcast the black-and-white movies of Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne and Grant, with the Buffalo native discovering them for the first time during his boyhood years in Atlanta.
“I grew up in the pasture and woods outside my folks’ farm acting out those characters,” says Chandler who, because of his baseball character, now has a jacket autographed by a real-life Indians great of the ‘40s, pitcher Bob Feller. “This is pretty much the same thing.”
In a smilar fashion, ABC is hoping new fans discover Homefront reruns this summer and follow the show when it moves later this week to the tough time slot of 9 pm Thursdays. That pits Homefront against NBC’s old favorite Cheers, CBS News’ Street Stories and Fox Broadcasting’s Beverly Hills, 90120 – which also has a strong female following.
Citing Homefront’s surprisingly youthful audience, its slow but sure build in viewership last season and NBC’s post-Cosby vulnerability, ABC Entertainment President Robert Iger says the scheduling is “not a move that necessarily puts Homefront in jeopardy.”
That’s good, because the new season’s shows will take on more sweeping social changes in postwar America – just as memorable episodes last season dealt with the violent beginnings of the labor movement and racism.
Says Latham: “We’re really looking forward to going into the birth of television and the suburbs.”