Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 1, 1995 TAG: 9504040008
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LYNN ELBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
In 1977, Turner was nurse Nola Aldrich on ``The Doctors'' serial. In ``Friends at Last,'' a CBS-TV movie, she portrays a wife and mother seeking a new life post-divorce.
Why has she joined a parade of film actors - from Kevin Costner to Shirley MacLaine to Tommy Lee Jones - who have appeared in or are planning TV projects? The script, Turner says.
``To me, it's never been the medium so much as it's been the material,'' she says. ``And I think the material is getting much better on these special projects.
``In fact, one could almost argue they're better than theatrically released films, since it's better thought out and more interesting material than shooting everybody and leaving the room.''
``Friends at Last'' (Sunday at 9 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7) charts the relationship of Fanny (Turner) and Phillip Conlon (Colm Feore). He's a journalist, she's a homemaker, and they're about to collide with each other, success and the social changes of the '70s.
In the film, Phillip's growing fame as a columnist strains their family life - the couple has a young daughter - and Fanny's sense of identity.
``The women's movement is really picking up steam,'' Turner says. ``She's being asked `What about yourself, what do you really have?' ... so she's feeling the pressure of that.''
When the Conlons split, painfully, Fanny discovers that she has no financial or social standing on her own. She must create a new life with the support of a friend (Faith Prince) and sheer determination.
Years later, after their daughter's graduation brings them back into contact, health problems force the couple to face the bond that remains between them.
The film, written by Susan Sandler (``Crossing Delancy,'' 1988), appealed both emotionally and intellectually, Turner says.
``To me it's wonderful, because I believe if you ever do love someone, that doesn't change,'' she says. ``They weren't able to adapt to one another's changes together, but it doesn't mean they didn't love each other.
``I find that very affirmative, and I like that. But more than that, it's the film's realization that she [Fanny] really was not considered an individual. She had no value.''
The issue of women's social equality has yet to be resolved, Turner says. It still demands attention. But the movie, she adds, ``is not a diatribe; this is not some propagandistic piece of work.''
Turner, speaking from her New York home, was coping with her own comparatively minor household crisis. The family dog has swallowed a piece of string and Turner's assistant has rushed it to the vet for X-rays.
The problem should be resolved before her daughter gets home, Turner says. She mentions that Rachel, 7, has a small part playing the Conlons' child in ``Friends at Last.''
``But mom, it's so boring,'' was Rachel's reaction to repeating scenes over and over. For Turner, however, working on a TV clock was more of an ordeal.
Turner, whose movies include ``Body Heat,'' ``Prizzi's Honor,'' ``The Accidental Tourist'' and ``War of the Roses,'' is used to a more leisurely filming schedule.
``There's so little time in which to shoot TV films. They told me I had the luxury of 24 days. It's usually 18. I refused to believe that, of course,'' she says in her famously smoky voice.
``I got to the point where I said `Don't tell me how many more scenes I have to do today, just tell me what one I'm doing now.'''
Producer Allyn Stewart says Turner met the demands gracefully.
``She gives one of the most generous performances I've ever seen,'' Stewart says. ``She threw herself into the character completely. There was never a day too long or a morning too early.
For her part, Turner pronounces herself pleased with her director, John Coles, and her co-stars Feore and Prince. That both are stage-trained - with Prince a Tony winner for the revival of ``Guys and Dolls'' - was no coincidence, Turner says.
Turner began on the stage and has kept up her theater credentials. She appeared in ``Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' in 1990 and was in rehearsal for a production of Jean Cocteau's ``Indiscretions'' to open April 27 on Broadway.
``I confess,'' she says playfully, that she wanted to work with stage veterans in ``Friends at Last.''
``It was very much our choice,'' she says. ``The thing about stage actors, and please don't take it as snobbism, because I don't mean it as such, is that they are trained to put out a performance again and again.
``You don't catch a performance, you don't happen to have a good take. Take 1 has to be the performance and you have to continue, to give it all each time.''
by CNB