Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 6, 1991 TAG: 9104060553
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL E. HILL/ THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The narrator was Sidney Poitier, and the subject was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
"I met with him in Washington for lunch," Poitier recalled. "I went to his office, and he wanted to take me to lunch. It was quite an experience, because you know, he is not as spry as he used to be, and he moves with great difficulty. Great difficulty.
"So we sort of took our time, and we went down the hall and we took an elevator. We went to his car, which was in the basement of the building, and every time I tried to help him, he would thank me, but he liked to move under his own steam, however slowly.
"We went to a restaurant in Georgetown that had a set of stairs, and it took him 20 minutes to climb the stairs. It was very difficult for him, but he did it."
It was a scene that spoke to the pride and determination of Marshall - and to the dignity that is uniquely Poitier's.
Poitier makes a rare television appearance - his first since 1956 - when he portrays Marshall in "Separate but Equal," a two-night miniseries dealing with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision desegregating all of America's schools. The series airs Sunday and Monday on ABC (at 9 p.m. on WSET-Channel 13 in the Roanoke viewing area).
"Separate" follows the development of a school segregation case in South Carolina, one of five similar cases that came to comprise the Brown v. Board of Education landmark case.
Poitier portrays Marshall in his days as chief counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Gloria Foster plays Marshall's first wife, the steadfast Vivian "Buster" Marshall, who sees him through this pivotal point in his career and in the nation's history.
And while the presence of Foster in the story gives a second, personal dimension to Poitier's characterization of Marshall, this is not the usual miniseries in which personal lives and intrigues are played out against a historical backdrop. Here the history is in the foreground, taking equal billing with the drama's players.
"I think this is different from many dramas and certainly many miniseries," said George Stevens, Jr., the program's producer, director and writer. "Sometimes some of the most successful films and miniseries have been taking great events of history and having them in the background, and having the different personal stories of individuals in the foreground.
"This is a story of the history, and the characters are in the foreground only as they apply to the history."
Indeed, at one point, Poitier, sensing the growing momentum and magnitude of the South Carolina case, says, "Sometimes history takes matters into its own hands."
The story gives Poitier many fine moments to take things into his own hands dramatically. There are the courtroom arguments and the quiet, poignant moments with Buster.
But Poitier's finest dramatic moments come not in a courtroom, as might be expected, but in a meeting with black leaders, many of whom fear a damaging defeat if the legal case is taken to the Supreme Court. Poitier's encouragement of the group to press on, no matter what, is the series' most highly charged scene.
Stevens has garnered a dozen Emmys, five for his productions of the "AFI Life Achievement Awards" and "Kennedy Center Honors" programs. His most recent dramatic Emmy was won for "The Murder of Mary Phagan" in 1988. His co-executive producer for "Separate" was Stan Margulies, the producer of "Roots."
In Poitier they have a star who won an Oscar for "Lilies of the Field" and left indelible impressions in such movies as "Blackboard Jungle," "The Defiant Ones," "To Sir With Love," and "In the Heat of the Night." Now he's in his first TV production since "A Man Is 10 Feet Tall."
It is clear that Stevens views Marshall as one of history's very tall men. "I think it's one of the misfortunes of our times that we have a great deal of celebrity around, but very few genuine heroes," said Stevens. "And I believe that Thurgood Marshall is a genuine American hero, and not because he is a Supreme Court justice, albeit a distinguished one.
"When he started out, he was a young man who had his troubles in college and finally got straightened out, and wanted to go to law school. His father was a Pullman porter, and Marshall worked as a waiter at the Gibson Island Club and finally got enough money to go to law school. And they wouldn't accept his application to the University of Maryland, which led him to Howard University, where a great man named Charlie Houston was the dean."
In "Separate but Equal," we see Marshall work with other NAACP lawyers in shaping legal strategy, struggle to keep the defense fund alive financially, cope with his ailing wife and, ultimately, savor triumph in the land's highest court.
It was a case that would permanently alter the country's social and political landscape and provide a touchstone for the civil-rights movement of the '60s.
But Marshall is not the only American hero spotlighted in "Separate but Equal." Ed Hall gives a beautifully understated performance as Rev. J.A. DeLaine, a teacher in Clarendon County, S.C., whose students have to walk up to 6 miles to get to school.
When he goes to his school superintendent and requests a bus - just one bus, even the oldest one in the county's fleet - to take his children back and forth to school, he is turned down. He files a complaint. And from that moment until the drama's last, you worry about DeLaine.
And there's Richard Kiley, perfect in the pivotal role of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Depicted as a man who is, at first glance, a rather regrettable political appointee, he comes on quietly but decisively to forge his badly split judicial brethren into a united legal force behind the Brown decision. The machinations of the conflicted justices are one of the drama's delights.
Burt Lancaster, in his last performance before his recent illness, adds valuable legal and dramatic counterpoint as John W. Davis, the distinguished lawyer and onetime presidential aspirant who argues the case for school segregation.
by CNB