ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604300014
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEAN PRESCOTT KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Mary Richards may get the glory as TV's trendsetting ``independent woman.'' But four years before Mary hit Minneapolis with career advancement on her mind, ``That Girl'' Ann Marie thumbed her nose at convention, waved goodbye to mom and pop in Brewster, N.Y., and laid siege to Manhattan.
``The spirit of the show was such a forerunner of what we all think now,'' says Marlo Thomas, who made Ann Marie a regular Thursday-night visitor in American homes. ``She was so far ahead of her time.''
Thomas has agreed to talk about the 30-year-old sitcom because it figures prominently in Nickelodeon's launch of its new 24-hour retro channel, Nick at Nite's TV Land.
Thomas is a non-stop talker and a woman with a mission.
``I want the show to get a good send-off,'' she says, ``because it's funny and dear, and it's meant a lot to a lot of girls and women.
``When it first went on the air, everybody was saying it was revolutionary. CBS and NBC said it wouldn't work, but ABC believed in it.''
Apparently Nickelodeon does, too - enough to make it a highlight of an all-night sneak preview of the new channel, which will be simulcast on Nick at Nite beginning at 7 p.m. tonight.
What viewers will see is the ``That Girl'' pilot, something no TV audience has ever seen: different parents, different job, and an oddly different name for her love interest, played by Ted Bessell.
``I hadn't seen it in 25 years myself,'' Thomas says. ``It was lost. We still have no negative, only the prints.''
Plan to watch, and pay attention to ``That Girl's'' classic '60s flipped up 'do - one copied at least as slavishly and as often as Jennifer Anniston's disheveled one on ``Friends.''
As for costuming, says Thomas, ``It was '60s Mod, coming from England. That Twiggy look,'' not unlike an awful lot of ``new'' spring looks from big-bucks designers.
Beyond the look of it, though, was the thoroughly modern tone.
``It was very honest, what I and my friends - everyone like us - were thinking,'' Thomas says. ``It was only as revolutionary as we were as the first generation of females who knew we were different, who didn't look to our mothers but to each other for answers.
``People were shocked when it was a hit, but it was a fait accompli,'' Thomas says. ``I was a young woman, a female of our time, and we were right on the edge of what was happening.''
Keeping ``That Girl'' company on opening night will be the ``Love American Style'' episode (1969) that spawned ``Happy Days,'' ``The Addams Family'' (1964), ``Hogan's Heroes'' pilot (1965), the legendary Beatles and Elvis appearances on ``The Ed Sullivan Show,'' an episode of ``The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour'' featuring The Jackson 5 and Ronald Reagan, ``Hill Street Blues,'' ``My Mother the Car,'' ``Petticoat Junction,'' ``Green Acres'' and the list goes on and on.
And for folks who like a little lagniappe with their warm, fuzzy, curl-up-on-the-sofa nostalgia, TV Land has ``retromercials'' - the only advertising on the channel, according to parent company Viacom - starring Speedy Alka-Seltzer, Rosie (Nancy Walker) the Bounty lady, Josephine the fix-it lady for Comet Cleanser and the fast-talking fellow for Federal Express, not to mention the Oscar Meyer bologna kid.
Anyone for escapism?
Jean Prescott writes for The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Miss.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB