Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 6, 1994 TAG: 9406070052
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
She could get a messy boy to clean up his room. She could persuade a girl who hated baths to wash. She knew ways to cure a boy who lied. She could cure a 'fraidy cat and a tattletale and get a child to go to bed. In short, she was terrific.
People who grew up in the 1940s and '50s might remember Betty MacDonald's character. But not many modern children do. Neither did Jean Stapleton, who did grow up in the '40s, or the younger Shelley Duvall, who has a large collection of children's books and makes award-winning productions for kids.
But by their own accounts, they were entranced by MacDonald's heroine and set about bringing her to life in stories inspired by the books. Guests include Christopher Lloyd, Ed Begley Jr., Joan Cusack, Meshach Taylor, Phyllis Diller and James Whitmore.
Executive producer Duvall has also made creative changes in the stories. "We contemporized them. There were certain things in the books that I wanted to bring up to speed."
"Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle," Duvall's fifth series for Showtime, begins Tuesday night (at 9:35) with a one-hour parents' preview that includes two stories: "The Not Truthful Cure," featuring Lloyd as Grandpa Moohead, who is given to overexaggeration, and his grandson, Egbert, who fibs; and "The Pet Forgetters Cure," about a girl who forgets to feed her pets. Begley and Cusack play her parents. Weekly episodes begin June 14.
Duvall said the publishers of the original "Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" books are considering reissuing the books. If they do, she said she hopes they hire the original illustrator, Maurice Sendak.
Any illustrator who takes a cue from Duvall's color-drenched televised version will be obliged to dress the character in stripes. "You can tell a Piggle-Wiggle by their stripes," said Duvall, who plays Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's daughter Potsi.
Stapleton, whose character lives in an upside-down house, has played in several Duvall series: the fairy godmother in "Cinderella," the ogress in "Jack in the Beanstalk" and Mother Goose in "Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme." A veteran actress, she won three Emmys for playing Edith Bunker over eight seasons of CBS's "All in the Family."
"It's good to be talking about (`Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle') again, because it was so delightful," Stapleton said. "We don't have a lot of delightful material on television. I'm beginning to think we're all going to regress to childhood, because that literature is the most revealing."
Duvall, whose collection of illustrated children's books numbers about 3,000, agreed. "There is some great children's literature out there. It's an untapped natural resource."
It was one of Duvall's staffers, visiting in Seattle, who reported that a children's theater there was doing a play based on the books, and that local children were flocking to it.
"Kids, from having seen the play, were writing in to the theater saying, `I have a cure for my older brothers' or whatever," said Duvall. "And suddenly there were these Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle fan clubs. So we pursued the rights and got them."
For Duvall, there was only one choice to play the lead: "Jean: the perfect Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. There were no others."
Stapleton snapped up the part. "If you are a character actress, `Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle' is a dream. I was in Toronto doing a movie for Fox, and I had two movie scripts. And here comes this bundle of stuff from Shelley: three scripts, outlines for others, and the books. As soon as I read them, I said, `This is it. I'd rather do this than the films.' It's the quality of writing that drew me, the literacy and the wit."
"Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle" was co-produced with Universal Family Entertainment and New Zealand's South Pacific Pictures. The cast and crew went to New Zealand to make the 13 shows in 10 weeks, working 12-hour days for six-day weeks.
by CNB