To Kyle Chandler and Tammy Lauren of ABC’s Homefront, prime-time’s cutest couple. As Jeff Metcalf and Ginger Szabo, a small-town guy and gal pursuing the Great American Dream, these two exude a natural chemistry and charisma that’s simply irresistible. He wants to be a major-league baseball player; she wants to be a movie star. He thinks she wants to be an actress for all the wrong reasons; she says that baseball is “a silly line of work for a grown man.” And so they court while the sparks fly; falling in and out of love with the stubborn petulance of the young and the restless. Will they ever get together and stay together? Who knows? Who cares? Watching and waiting is half the fun. (January 11, 1992)
To a supremely satisfying season finale on ABC’s Homefront. Unlike most prime-time network soaps and dramas, which have a tendency to leave viewers with life-or-death cliffhangers, Homefront went out by actually tying up more loose ends than it created. The good guys won, the bad guys – and gals – lost, love conquered all, and everyone lived happily ever after. Well, at least for the time being. What’s important is that Homefront ended on a note of hope – the feeling that sometimes things can work out – and regardless of whether the series is renewed, who could ask for more than that? (May 9, 1992)
To Homefront’s homecoming. On March 9, after an entire season of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t, ABC returns the snazzy post-WWII soaper to the time slot in which it debuted, wisely removing it from its futile face-off with Cheers on Thursdays. In the words of the show’s theme song, that means Homefront fans are once again free to ac-cen-tchu-ate the positive while savoring one of TV’s classiest dramas. But enjoy it while it lasts: with only nine episodes in the can and a slim chance for renewal, producers have filmed a season finale that may also have to serve as a series finale – the long awaited wedding of heart-throbs Jeff and Ginger. So, if this really is the Homestretch, at least no one will be kept waiting at the altar. (March 6, 1993)
“Knots and Homefront Getting The Hang Of
It-Or Not”
Would you rather watch a wedding or hang from a cliff? That’s your choice, as two dramas take markedly different approaches to their season finales. Both ABC’s Homefront and CBS’ Knots Landing have suffered from sluggish Nielsens (Knots was in 43rd place the week of March 9; newcomer Homefront was 62nd), so producers of both are hoping for boffo closers. Knots will end its 13th season with a cliff-hanger (April 9), in which the life of pouting Paige Matheson (Nicollette Sheridan) is left swinging in the balance. “For a while there was concern the show wouldn’t be coming back,” says Knots executive producer David Jacobs. “So we figured, Why make it easier for CBS to cancel us?” (Knots will return for at least one more season.) Homefront will try a less soapy tack, finishing its season (April 15) by tying up loose plot lines. “We want the closing chapter to be a payoff for viewers who have stuck with us,” says executive producer Bernard Lechowick. Instead of what he calls a “damsel-tied-to-the-railroad-track” ending, the post-WWII drama will wrap up with a nuptial-although who’s marrying whom is a secret. “Goals that people have been striving for-to love someone, to marry someone-will be reached” is all he’ll say. Will the Homefront strategy work? To find out, keep watching this space. (Entertainment Weekly, 04-03-1992)
Don’t blink during the NBC miniseries Jackie Collins’ Lady Boss (airing this weekend), and you might spot two stars of ABC’s Homefront. A heavily disguised Kyle Chandler and Tammy Lauren appear so briefly that their names aren’t in the credits. It’s all a little in-joke dreamed up by Lady Boss director Charles Jarrott to humor author Collins. Jackie says Jarrott knows that Homefront is ‘‘one of my favorite programs. Kyle and Tammy walked on our set with hats pulled down over their eyes, and the surprise worked.’’ How did Jarrott snare two stars from a rival network, albeit for a short time? Easy -- Lauren is also his stepdaughter. (People Magazine 10-12-92)
Us named him one of America’s sexiest men. USA Today said that he and co-star Tammy Lauren (Ginger) are “absolutely adorable.” But Homefront heartthrob Kyle Chandler (Jeff) hates being tagged as a sex symbol. “I just think that it demeans me as an actor – and as a character,” says Chandler. “It’s like calling someone the ‘H’ word. I’m very defensive against that.” The ‘H’ word? He’s referring to “hunk,” of course. Although this is the year of the twenty-something hunk, Chandler takes offense from such a compliment. “I have a lot more character than that word says. Even though my interviews may not show it.” This shy, Georgia-born actor grew up with more romantic dreams than being a mere sex symbol. “I used to watch old movies like The Sands of Iwo Jima and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance on Ted Turner’s Atlanta station,” Chandler explains. “[Afterwards], I would go off in the woods near our farm and act out these characters.” Chandler, who wants his career to stay pure, bustles when easy labels are thrown at him or his show. In fact, the actor cringes when Homefront is called a soap opera. “ ‘Soap opera’ is a bad term – a harsh word. It categorizes [the show], and takes away its uniqueness,” he explains. “I’d call it a damn good TV show that’s very similar to a novel. Sure, there is a story that continues, but each episode has a unique beginning, middle and end.”
Before moving to L.A., Homefront’s Giuliana Santini (Gina) was a struggling actress in New York. For a time, she waited tables at Live Bait, a popular Manhattan eatery, where her boss was Eric Petterson, husband of Loving’s Noelle Beck (Trisha). Petterson actually helped introduce Santini to her longtime steady, actor Clark Tufts. When Santini moved to L.A., she left only one treasured possession behind – her pet female iguana. “I bought her in my senior year in high school,” Santini reveals, “after I saw The Terminator. There was an iguana in the movie, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen.” These days, Santini’s mom has temporary custody of the pet, who according to Santini, just perches on mom’s window sill all day long.
“Homefront’s Sexy Mama?”
When Homefront’s Wendy Phillips was pow-wowing with Co-Executive Producers Bernard Lechowick and Lynn Latham, she insisted that her character, Anne Metcalf, be more than just a June Cleaver style mom. She recalls, “One of the things I thought was most important – and I hope it is not just vanity – was that this woman should have a sensuality or sexuality.”
According to Phillips, coquettish roles stopped coming her way when she became a real-life mom. (Her daughter, Virginia, is seven and a half.) “After I became a mother, I was a non-person for a while,” she says. “When you be come a mother, a lot of men and women consider you to have become a Madonna, and to have entered some kind of safe zone. And that is not sexy anymore. It certainly put me in an identity crisis. I was an aging ingénue who had a baby and whose tummy didn’t snap back and two years went by.
“When I started going out on auditions, I wasn’t an ingénue anymore – I was a woman,” she explains. “And I had no film of this new me. Here I was a mom, and I couldn’t even get my buttons lined up for an interview.”
Landing a part as Richard Kiley’s daughter in the acclaimed series A Year In The Life changed all that. “Before A Year In The Life, I couldn’t get a job if my life depended on it,” she recalls. “I was taking classes at Santa Monica Junior College trying to learn typing and English grammar, because as an actress, I had no skill at any other type of employment.”
After that, she starred on The Robert Guillaume Show and became Lauren Daniels, a running character on Falcon Crest. She also earned critical praise for her performance as Robert De Niro’s ex-wife in the movie Midnight Run.
When Wendy Phillips was told by an interviewer, “You look like you could play your daughter,” she smiled. Phillips, who plays Anne Metcalf, the mother of two grown sons and a daughter on Homefront, was at L.A.’s Union Station for a press conference introducing the cast of the post-World War II period drama. “I’m very flattered,” said Phlilips. “But I don’t think two years is a significant difference between my age and my character’s age. Unfortunately, in Hollywood, when you go for a part like this, every actress between thirty-five and sixty is competing for the same thing.”
This role is a new challenge for Phillips. “This is the first time I’ve played the matriarch,” she said. “I am a little nervous about it because I think the most difficult thing for any actor is to play the oak tree, so to speak.”
Most recently, Phillips played gangster Bugsy Siegel’s wife, Esther, opposite Warren Beatty in the upcoming film Bugsy.
“Everybody asks me, ‘What’s Warren Beatty like?’” revealed Phillips. “He was very generous to me as an actor, which means a lot. I felt like a small actor in with the big fishes. But he was always very sensitive that my creative input into the scene was equal to Barry’s (director Barry Levinson) and his.”
Does Phillips have insight into Beatty’s celebrated ways with women? “The thing they don’t often talk about is that fifty percent of his charm comes from his intelligence,” says the actress. “That’s why women really go for him. He’s a handsome man with a self-deprecating sense of humor who is so smart.”
“I never guessed I’d be on a prime-time soap. I hope it will never end,” says Homefront’s Dick Anthony Williams who plays Davis family patriarch Abe. Judging from the acclaim that Homefront has received, his tenure probably won’t end in the near future. Still, Williams isn’t smug about his position on the show – his road to success was full of obstacles. Born into a very poor Chicago family, the actor contracted polio at the age of ten. But ironically, the sickness allowed him to see how the other half lives.
“The black school for [handicapped] kids, The Christopher School for Crippled Children, was packed to the gills,” remembers Williams. “So, they bused me to The Spaulding School for Crippled Children, where the white kids went. That changed my life. It exposed me to a whole other realm of how people lived. My whole world where I had lived was near gangs. People wound up in jail for life, or got killed, or had an eye out or an arm off. But, at The Spaulding School, [it was different]. I would go to a friend’s house that had a swimming pool. It enabled me to break out of this little dark cell where I lived.”
Williams’s early childhood helps him to understand Abe Davis’s motivations as a servant-turned-restaurateur. The actor’s mother, Florence, is an inspiration: “My mother worked in the bathroom of a restaurant, where she handed out towels and lipstick. She would come home at one or two o’ clock [in the morning]. It was very dangerous. She had the humility [in her job] and could deal with us as well. In Homefront, the Davises say, We’re doing it for our son, so he can get an education.’ In that sense, it is almost heroic.”
Williams’s acting ability could have also come from his mother, who, according to the actor, “had a strange history,” that he found out about after her death. “She was an actress and a dancer and even a playwright,” Williams explains “She owned a halfway house for actors and actresses and musicians that were not doing so well.” Williams says his mother never talked about her creative experience, perhaps out of modesty.
As for Williams’s bout with polio, he says, “With underwater treatment and exercise, it gradually went away.” Fortunately, his memories, dreams and ambition did not.
Hattie Winston, who plays housekeeper Gloria Davis on Homefront, isn’t giving up hope. While the show’s future on ABC looks shaky, the actress says, “I sure hope it will get picked up. I’ve got all-the angels in heaven putting out good words”
Winston is very well-connected in such matters. In fact, she feels that her mom, who passed away four years ago, is watching over her. “My mother was a housekeeper in Mississippi,” says Winston, who grew up in Greenville in the heart of the Delta “So Gloria is based on her a lot. My mom had acting in her blood. She would always get up and speak in church and do lay sermons. She always used to watch my plays in school. [I know] Mom is watching now. She was one of my biggest fans and I think she still is.”
Winston feels close to another woman who passed away – actress Diana Sands, who won critical acclaim on Broadway for her work in ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ and ‘The Owl and the Pussycat.’ “We named our nine-year-old daughter Samantha Diana Wheeler in honor of Diana Sands,” says Winston. “She was one of the finest American actresses that ever lived, and she was my mentor. Unfortunately, she died at thirty-nine of cancer.”
Winston adds that Diana Sands “is very much a part of our lives. Her pictures are all over the house. When she passed, her mom gave me some of her gowns, one of which I will wear when I receive my Academy Award!” she laughs. (Winston already has two prestigious Obie awards for her off Broadway roles in Mother Courage and The Michigan.)
The actress and her husband, Harold Wheeler, a composer and orchestrator who worked on the recent TV movie Stompin’ At The Savoy, remain optimistic no matter what happens with Homefront. “I want to produce a love story about an African American couple who are not twenty-one, but no one is interested right now. There are some good things happening for black actors and artists – but there is so much morel” she says. “I want to see more of the experiences I know about and my friends know about on TV and the movie screen.”
And there is another issue closer to her own home front. “My daughter says, ‘Mom, I want a little sister,’ “ she reveals. “I waited so long being caught up in that working woman syndrome, waiting a long time for our daughter. I would love to have a houseful of children, but I have to do some hard soul-searching in the next year or two. And I am in the process of doing that. (Soap Opera Digest)
On Homefront, Jessica Steen’s character, Linda Metcalf, works at the local factory. Steen reveals that some of her most valuable research on post-World War II working women came from her own family. “I was trained to weld for one scene,” she says, “and I spoke with my great aunt and grandparents, who were all alive during the war. My great aunt was a single woman who never married. So she had a very good idea of what it was like to work during that period.”
Steen thinks the “Rosie the Riveters” of post-World War II America would have a great deal in common with women of the 1990s. “I think problems that came to a head at that point are still here today,” she says, “such as equal pay for both sexes.” (Soap Opera Digest)
Alexandra Wilson has no problem jumping from one intense relationship to another as Sarah Metcalf on ABC’s Homefront. Sarah was engaged to be married to World War II soldier boy Hank Metcalf but fell for his hunky younger brother Jeff while Hank was making the world safe for democracy. Sarah did the right thing and married Hank when he resumed to their small Ohio town. But Wilson herself would just as soon take her time.
“I am not dating anyone right now – I am spending some time alone,” says Wilson who usually gets up daily at five a.m. during Homefront’s seven-day shooting schedule. She was a regular on Loving (as April Hathaway) and Another World (as Josie Frame) before getting the role of Sarah this year.
Wilson is getting into gardening, cooking, and decorating in L.A., but her real passion these days is a two-and-a- half-year-old mixed breed dog named McKenzie. “I went down to the ASPCA and saw him in a cage and I just fell in love with him – he has a spot over his eyes and looks just like Spuds McKenzie.”
Wilson discovered her professional passion as early as age five when she was hanging around a drama class taught by her mother, Elaine Wilson. “She put me in some of her productions, and she taught me in high school [Chantilly High in Fairfax, Virginia]. I was never sure I could do it, but I knew I had to be an actor.”
So she went to New York and, like countless other aspiring performers, waited tables. Among her customers were heavyweights Paul Newman, Mick Jagger and Matthew Broderick. She also paid the rent doing Pizza Hut, Tide and Coke commercials, before getting parts on Another World and Loving, as well as doing some episodic guest spots.
Wilson has surely progressed since those early days of scrounging for work. One sure sign of her evolution as an actress came when she watched an early appearance of hers on Mike Hammer: “They stuffed my bra so I would have 38 Double Ds and stuffed me in spandex to play a prostitute,” she laughs. “It must have worked, because cars stopped on location [New York’s Columbus Circle] and offered me money.” (Soap Opera Digest)
Warm, smiling, tolerant Mimi Kennedy plays severe, scheming and snobbish Ruth Sloan on ABC’s Homefront. Kennedy does a good job playing that mean woman who refuses to take in her slain son’s charming Italian war bride. No matter that Gina just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Ruth’s first and only grandchild. The icy Mrs. Sloan won’t budge an inch. It’s a wonder how Kennedy can make the transition back to her two real-life children, Cisco, nine, and Molly, six, every single night. “Our shadow side has to go somewhere. And my shadow side has become Mrs. Sloan,” she notes.
Kennedy just recently got in the habit of playing these wicked mom types – last season she had a powerful appearance as Linda Fairgate’s (LAR PARK LINCOLN) unloving mother on Knots Landing. That one brought her out of a short retirement as an actor – she was on the writing staff of Knots at the time. “Because I was part of the writing staff, I made sure I did all the words exactly as written,” she says.
Kennedy’s favorite contribution to the writing on Knots last season was the scene in which Julie and Frank were discussing safe sex. “I was responsible for Julie saying on television: ‘Don’t get lambskin rubbers because the [AIDS] virus can go right through them.’ I thought that was important for kids to know.”
When the time came to play her Homefront character, Kennedy says she I called upon images of her mother, Nancy Hogan Kennedy. “My mother died last year,” notes Kennedy, “and I’m working off my image of her and her friends. Of course they would be horrified to hear me say that, because they were all wonderful people.
“Mrs. Sloan is a do-gooder who by doing good does bad. She doesn’t like Italians, and she thinks it’s all right not to. What I hope is that audiences will see the stupidity in her prejudice.” And might Mrs. Sloan evolve into something nicer? Kennedy fears not. “No,” she states, “I think they’re planning irredeemability for Mrs. Sloan.” (Soap Opera Digest)
The Enquirering Mind: This Enquirering mind wants to know: Will advice columnist Dear Abby, who led the Homefront charge last spring, mobilize her troops again?
ABC announced last week that Homefront, one of the finest hours on television, would not return to the schedule until spring. Dear Abby’s appeal to save the show last spring generated 20,000 letters in 14 days. ABC executives were amazed. “Getting 20,000 letters in two weeks from one column is pretty significant. There’s a lot of passion out there,” Robert Iger, ABC’s chief programmer, said last summer. Homefront fans should immediately write Iger’s successor: Ted Harbert, ABC Entertainment president, 2040 Avenue Of The Stars, Los Angeles, Calif. 90067.
Those who send a copy of their letter to Viewers for Quality Television, P.O. Box 195, Fairfax Station, Va. 22039, will receive a list of Homefront sponsors. (John Kiesewetter, Cincinnati Enquirer, 1993)
“What Would The Pope Say?”
Anne Metcalf and Al Kahn make one of the more appealing couples on television this season – she, the Catholic widow who obeyed the rules of her religion until she broke a few of them; he, the brash Jewish union organizer upsetting everybody’s apple cart. Their unexpected and refreshing interfaith romance has given the writers an opportunity to explore themes that relate to both the forties (getting married for the sake of the baby, since abortion was against the law) and to present day (in what faith to raise the child, and how Anne’s other, grown children will deal with having a new man in their mother’s life). As played by Wendy Phillips, Anne is a wonderful characterization – a woman who never thought about changing her life until she had the opportunity. Watching circumstance and impulse wreak havoc on Anne’s assumptions has been a delight. Phillip’s naive, narrow-minded Anne is so different from the embittered, contemporary woman she played on A Year In The Life that Phillips should be ranked one of television’s more versatile actresses.
“Worst Wife: Caroline, Homefront”
Here’s one bride who never studied at the Donna Reed School of Good Spousekeeping. Back in war-torn Britain, Caroline was charmed by American G.I. Charlie Hailey, but she only married the lovable lug to escape breadlines and despair. Once she set foot in River Run, Ohio, she didn’t waste any time getting into trouble. She hid money from her husband, slept with a traveling salesman and started spying for industrialist Mike Sloan. When Charlie’s union called an all-out strike, Caroline’s Mata Hari tactics nearly did him in.
After Charlie walked out, Caroline tried luring him back. She broke the Murphy bed, then begged him to come over and fix it. It didn’t work. Sadder-but-wiser Charlie was sweet on angelic Gina and no longer spellbound by this British she-devil. (Soap Opera Digest, 1993)
“Close To Home”
Most talented actors find themselves affected by the characters they portray, particularly when they’re written with the depth and sensitivity of the characters on Homefront. For Sterling Macer, Jr. (Robert), the racism encountered by his character hit very close to home – especially in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. “ Playing a young black man in the 1940s, pretty soon those frustrations get ingrained,” Macer explains. “You start feeling you are up against all those things your character is. Then, L.A. is on fire, and [I] realize I am up against some of the same things.” Macer calls the acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers videotaped beating black motorist Rodney King “a travesty and a disgrace not only to every African American, but to all people who want to believe the system works for everybody.”
While it’s difficult to change the judicial system, Macer believes there are also personal problems to be tackled. “One of the biggest problems is the breakdown of the American family,” he says. “It leads to low aspirations and low self-esteem. It fosters the desire to join a gang, because gangs do have a structure and a hierarchy of values and morals – however skewed the majority feels they are. Young people will always gravitate to some kind of family, some kind of bonds.” Macer says he’s decided to take action by joining the Los Angeles Big Brothers, an organization devoted to enriching the lives of poor L.A. youths. “I am not going to change the big picture all by myself,” he admits. “Choosing a big target leads to big frustration. But, if everybody does a little, something will get done.”
The residents of Homefront’s River Run, Ohio, let loose Thanksgiving week when the town radio station sponsors a contest in which the first prize is a Hollywood screen test. The entire town turns out for several dance numbers. Since authenticity was key, Homefront brought in Emmy Award-winning choreographer Michael Darrin to teach the cast fox-trot, rumba and jitterbug steps for the tunes Marie, In The Mood, Dancing in the Dark and Besame Mucho.
Tammy Lauren, who plays Ginger, has always wanted to learn those dances. “It’s difficult by today’s standards of dancing; you are totally dependent on your partner and he on you,” she says. “After hours of rehearsal we really knew the meaning of ‘roll out of bed.’”
Two younger couples – Ginger and Jeff and Caroline and Charlie – also did “all sorts of lifts” in the jitterbug part of the competition.
Lauren hopes more such scenes will be incorporated into the series now that the cast knows how to swing. (Soap Opera Weekly, Nov. 1991)
“Sammi Likes Being Despicable”
British actress Sammi Davis-Voss, the woman people love to despise on abc’s Homefront says she’s never played anyone as unlikable as the series deceitful, money-hungry british war bride, Caroline Hailey. “At first it was really hard to cope with strangers saying, ‘I hate Caroline...she is so bad’ says Sammi. Now she likes the recognition, even if the fans are outraged. (TV Guide, Feb. 8, 1992)
“Endorsement”
In the world of prime time, a vote of confidence from the folks at Viewers for Quality TV is always nice, since the group is a respected outfit. But a word of praise from a syndicated columnist who reaches 95 million readers a day is pure gold. And when that columnist is Dear Abby and she devotes an entire column to ABC’s Homefront, well, it’s like wow. That’s exactly what happened Monday in 1,200 newspapers, thereby pleasing the Homefront folks immensely. The part they liked best: Abby listed the address of ABC Entertainment President Bob Iger to demand that Homefront be renewed. (No word yet). At today’s year-end party for the cast, Abby (who first divulged her love for Homefront in this very space) will get a Homefront director’s chair, personalized, of course. (USA Today Mar. 31, 1992)
“Missing Episodes?”
Lo and behold, with original series performing so well this summer, ABC and NBC have stumbled across “lost episodes” of Homefront and Seinfeld. Just where were these unseen episodes hiding? In Homefront’s case, footage from an earlier hour-long episode was left over when the pilot was expanded to 90 minutes. Fleshed out with new scenes, it airs July 28 as Homefront rejoins ABC’s lineup. But the Seinfeld being heavily promoted as a lost episode is a 2-year-old repeat. An NBC spokesman says it is a “tongue-in-cheek” promo. Boy, that’s comedy isn’t it? (USA Today June 30, 1992)
“On the Homefront: A ‘Lost’ Episode”
Attention, Homefront fans: you haven’t seen it all – the entire series, that is. Included in the first-season rerun of ABC’s post-WWII soap, which begins July 21, is a “lost” episode airing July 28 that focuses on the funeral of serviceman Mike Sloan Jr., killed overseas. “ABC felt people would just start crying and never tune in again if it was used as the second episode, as originally planned,” says Hattie Winston, who, as Gloria Davis, plays a pivotal part in the story. Indeed, viewers should be prepared to get out the hankies when Winston delivers a spine-tingling performance of the spiritual “Precious Lord” as she stands by Mike’s casket. “It was one of those scenes in which I really had to reach way down within my soul”- says Winston. (TV Guide July 18, 1992)
“Home Boy”
The success of ABC’s Homefront which kicks off its second season Thursday at 9 p.m. ET/PT, hasn’t affected one of its stars. Harry O’Reilly returned to his native New York this week and one of his first stops was Manhattan’s 92nd Street YMCA, where he was one of the stars in the basketball league. “I walked into the Y and it was great, everyone was really supportive,” O’ReilIy says. However, some pals did notice a slight change. “I took off some weight and was really playing. I’m dunking again.” O’Reilly was plucked from the theater scene more than a year ago. When he read the role of Charlie Hailey, “I just knew it was for me. I said to my agent, ‘No one else is going to get this part.’ It was like having the basketball with 10 seconds left on the clock. I just knew it would go in.” (USA Today Sept. 16, 1992)
On Dec. 10, ABC’s Homefront begins a series of episodes confronting the polio epidemic in the ‘40s, with new mom Anne Kahn (Wendy Phillips) falling victim to the disease. The story line hit close to home for actor Dick Anthony Williams, who plays Abe Davis. He had polio during grade school in the ‘40s. Williams recovered, but remembers the damp woolen blankets in a hospital ward and the fear of being trapped in an iron lung (this, after seeing a film in which a monster came after a kid in one). Williams, who is black, grew up on Chicago’s south side and was bused to a mostly white school for crippled children on the west side. The experience made him a life long proponent of busing to achieve integration. “It introduced me to white people and taught me how to deal with them on an even basis.” Williams spoke to Phillips and other actors about having polio. Nothing heavy, he says. “I just sort of let them know my experience and how I was affected. (USA Today, Oct. 22, 1992)
The struggling Homefront, which was preempted for most of November, returns tonight at 9 ET/PT with a new episode. And on the next new episode Dec. 17, Anne Kahn (Wendy Phillips) contracts polio. Of the pre-emptions, executive producer Bernard Lechowick jokes, “We sent ABC the first draft of our 13th episode with a title – “Matlock: The Early Years.” Matlock is expected to move into the Thursday 8 p.m. time slot in January, which would provide a much stronger lead-in for Homefront. (USA Today, Dec. 3, 1992)
Kiese-watching: Homefront producers did some last-minute scrambling to delete references to Waco, Texas, from tonight’s season finale (9-11 p.m., channels 12, 2). the original version had Jeff (Kyle Chandler) assigned to a minor-league baseball team in Waco as a subtle tribute to the parents of co-creator Lynn Marie Latham. But the reference was changed after last weeks Branch Davidian fire. By the way, the Homefront folks must wait until May 11, when abc sets its fall schedule, to learn if they’ve been canceled or renewed. “If we don’t come back, fans won’t feel ripped off by the final episode. If we do come back, there are plenty of places to go from here,” says spokesman Neil Schubert. (Cincinnati Enquirer, Apr. 26, 1993)
“Producer Regrets Homefront Didn’t Return”
by John Kiesewetter, The
Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 4, 1994
His hometown Cleveland Indians are playing well, and fans are flocking to new Jacobs Field, so what more could TV producer Bernard Lechowick want? Lechowick’s dream season would include his Homefront series still on ABC. If ABC hadn’t canceled the post-World War II drama in 1993, Homefront would be dramatizing Cleveland in 1947, when the Indians won the American League championship. “This fall was not only the last time the Indians were in the World Series, but also the first time the World Series was ever broadcast on television on Cleveland’s WEWS-TV. We were keenly aware of that,” Lechowick says. Homefiont was prepared to exploit those events through Indians outfielder Jeff Metcalf (Kyle Chandler) and Ginger Szabo (Tammy Lauren), who worked at a Cleveland TV station. Lechowick and his wife, Lynn Marie Latham, return to TV today with a new summer series, Hotel Malibu.
Enquiring Mind:
This Enquirering mind wants to know ‘Why aren’t Homefront reruns on cable?’
“It’s a Warner Bros. property, and they apparently don’t know what to do with it,” Lechowick says. “My personal opinion is that Homefront would be an absolute gold mine in home video.”
Homefront (ABC, 10-11 p.m.) Although it’s billed as “all new,” this summer installment of the retro-soap Homefront is really a long-withheld old episode that was intended to follow the show’s premiere last fall. Instead, ABC skipped directly to episode three. The network’s apparent skittishness is understandable-this exceptionally downbeat installment is built around the funeral of young soldier Mike Sloan and the unapologetic bigotry of his mother, Ruth, the town’s money-encrusted shrew (played with superbly genteel condescension by Mimi Kennedy). But ABC should have bitten the bullet and aired the show, which demonstrates just how effectively Homefront manages to work contemporary issues of race, class, and sex into its small-town, post-World War II setting. As she plans her son’s funeral, Ruth spends most of her time spitting venom at her bereaved daughter-in-law, Gina (Giuliana Santini), an Italian immigrant, and trying to prevent her black housekeeper, Gloria (Hattie Winston), from fulfilling Mike’s wish that she sing at his memorial service. This is fine with Gloria’s embittered son, Robert (Sterling Macer Jr.), who doesn’t understand why his mother would want to be a “colored mammy singing at the rich white boy’s funeral” anyway, but is not so fine with Mike’s old buddy Hank Metcalf, who instead should be worried about the doe-eyed glances passing between his wife and his brother, and whose sister, incidentally, was in love with Mike, and well, it gets complicated. Homefront is, after all, a soap opera. It also happens to be one of TV’s smartest and most elegantly crafted dramas. B+ -MH (Entertainment Weekly, July 1992)