THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 22, 1995 TAG: 9504200046
SECTION: TELEVISION WEEK PAGE: 1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 187 lines
IT WILL SOON be time for television's journalists and documentarians to remind America of the day in May 50 years ago when the Allies freed Europe from Nazi tyranny. V-E Day.
But first, TV has another war to deal with, a war far less noble in cause and purpose than World War II. This war - the war in Southeast Asia - was a catastrophic mistake, according to the recently published memoirs of a man who helped to orchestrate it.
On Friday at 9 p.m., the Discovery Channel retreats to April 28, 1975, when the last American left Vietnam, in ``The Fall of Saigon: A Discovery Journal Special.'' Who can ever forget the TV images of Americans and their South Vietnamese allies leaving Saigon from the roof of the U.S. embassy by helicopter as Communist troops encircled Saigon?
That tense, frantic evacuation, said former president Gerald R. Ford, was symbolic of mistakes we made in South Vietnam. ``It was a condemnation of our policy.''
Left behind in Southeast Asia when the Americans pulled out of the war, which former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara today says he regrets advocating, were the children fathered by GIs. That legacy is revived on ABC at 9 p.m. Sunday in a film, ``Redwood Curtain,'' the 184th presentation of ``The Hallmark Hall of Fame.''
The plot: A young Amerasian woman who is a gifted concert pianist (Lea Salonga) decides to disrupt a comfortable life with her wealthy father (John Lithgow) to find her ``real'' parents. The search leads to the redwoods of Northern California and a meeting with an eccentric - that's an understatement - homeless vet played by Jeff Daniels.
Daniels reprises his Broadway role here.
This is a slice of the dumb and dumber Daniels seen in recent movie roles. Check out his eyes - one blue, one brown.
Of Salonga's role in ``Redwood Curtain,'' Lithgow said in an interview, ``Her great passion is to find out who her father was. She has a sense that she cannot be a whole person until she knows firsthand where she came from. The central question is `Who am I?' ''
Come April 30 at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central, there will be another Vietnam war revival, but with a much different tone. Comedian Tom Rhodes and a camera crew found what's funny and offbeat (a restaurant that serves sauteed cobra) in Southeast Asia 20 years after Saigon fell in ``Viva Vietnam: A White Trash Adventure Tour.''
Rhodes discovers a growing cottage industry in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. The Vietnamese take discarded Coca-Cola cans and turn them into toy helicopters modeled after the ones that carried out the evacuation of the U.S. embassy.
The fall of Saigon has evolved into a one-liner on Comedy Central.
Twenty Aprils ago, nobody was laughing as crack North Vietnamese troops were fast approaching Saigon. In the last stage of the U.S. evacuation, called Operation Frequent Wind, the U.S. ambassador departed at 4:58 a.m. on April 30, 1975.
Just hours later, Gen. Duong Van Minh surrendered Saigon to the Communists. Billions of U.S. dollars and tens of thousands of U.S. lives were spent. Wasted, some say.
``I was amazed at the clarity of so many witnesses' memories,'' said ``Discovery Journal'' producer Michael Dutfield. ``The events of the last hours in Saigon had a profound effect on them all.''
Garrick Utley narrates the two-hour special, which repeats at midnight. Among those who appear on camera is Richard Carey, the former Marine Corps brigadier general who commanded the helicopter evacuation as the Communists were launching their great Ho Chi Minh offensive. And there is the North Vietnamese general, Tran Van Tra, who was deputy commander of the assault on Saigon.
Old enemies come together on TV.
It makes compelling viewing.
Not as compelling, but still worth two hours of your couch time, is ``Redwood Curtain.'' Said Lithgow, ``Truths from long ago emerge from that terrible war, and major secrets are revealed at the end of the film. It's the type of revelation you get at the end of a really good mystery.''
This Year of Remembrance, when TV brings back the significant moments of World War II, as well as those in Vietnam, marches on Sunday at 9 p.m. with a 90-minute special on The Discovery Channel, ``Nightmare's End: The Liberation of the Camps.''
Said producer Rex Bloomstein, ``The Allied soldiers who opened the concentration camps in Poland, Austria, Germany and other European countries have never forgotten their experiences, and nor should we.''
On Sunday, May 7, at 10 p.m., Home Box Office puts on a documentary, ``One Survivor Remembers,'' with a similar theme. Gerda Weissmann, who was found more dead than alive, a skeleton of a girl, at Buchenwald in April, 1945, salutes her American liberators as mythical heroes.
``I am forever grateful to them.'' Let us never forget what took place in those camps, said Gerda Weissmann Klein, an author and lecturer who lives in Arizona.
Other television of note in the days to come:
Starting Wednesday at 10 p.m., Bravo takes viewers inside that shrine to Method Acting advocated by Constantin Stanislavski and Lee Strasberg, The Actors Studio on 44th Street in Manhattan. First up on ``Inside The Actors Studio'' is Paul Newman, who says he isn't a naturally gifted actor.
``But I am tenacious,'' he says to interviewer James Lipton. Acting is hard work, comparable to dredging a river, Newman suggests. He succeeded by ``keeping my ears open and my mouth shut.''
Sally Field, Dennis Hopper, Shelley Winters, Alec Baldwin, Sidney Lumet, Stephen Sondheim and Neil Simon will be featured in future segments.
It's nearly crunch time in network television - the deadline for NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox to announce their fall schedules. Will less than wildly popular shows such as NBC's ``Homicide: Life on the Streets'' survive?
Starting Friday night at 10, NBC gives one last push to the far-better-than-average cop series shot in Baltimore by reeling off the first of two new episodes. This Friday, David Morse is the guest star, playing a lawyer who shoots a young man in self-defense. Or was it self-defense?
In the season finale on May 5, a gem directed by executive producer Barry Levinson, guest star Bruno Kirby plays an ex-con who plans to kill the detective (Andre Braugher) who helped put him away six years ago. Richard Edson is great in a dumb boy supporting role as Kirby's reluctant accomplice.
This is TV too good for TV.
Elsewhere on the tube in the days to come, Cox Cable is giving its subscribers a spring treat - a free sampling of HBO and Showtime Saturday and Sunday on Channel 46. Missed ``Sleepless in Seattle''? ``The Pelican Brief''? Here's your chance to get caught up. . . . Darren Burrows, who plays the slightly out of it but lovable Ed Chigliak on ``Northern Exposure,'' actually ends up in Alaska as host of ``In the Land of the Grizzlies'' on TBS Sunday at 10 p.m. ``Northern Exposure'' isn't shot in Cicely, Alaska, as CBS would have you believe, but rather in and around Roslyn, Wash.
There are 30,000 un-menaced grizzlies in Alaska, but in China and Russia, bears are under siege by hunters and poachers. . . . Remember Blair Brown, the actress who won our hearts in ``The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd''? She's back on the tube in ``Talk It Over,'' a new gabfest on Lifetime, the network for women. Their words. Not mine. It starts Wednesday at 11 p.m., then moves to Saturdays at 11 a.m. on May 6.
NBC is busting with pride over the fact it will show ``Jurassic Park'' on May 7. It's the most popular movie ever, you know. Preceding that, the Peacock network trots out ``The Making of Jurassic Park'' on Wednesday night at 8. James Earl Jones hosts this special that reveals almost all the secrets that made the dinosaurs so scary on film. Won't that spoil the fun? . . . One day after Comedy Central salutes the Marx Brothers with a six-hour marathon of their three best known films, ``Coconuts,'' ``Animal Crackers'' and ``Duck Soup,'' The Disney Channel puts on a Marx Brothers special, ``The Unknown Marx Brothers: On Your Marx, Get Set, Go.'' That's on Monday night at 11. The Comedy Central ``On Your Marx'' marathon starts Sunday at 1 p.m. Hey, Groucho. Ever shot an elephant in your pajamas?
Big news in the world of pop music: The Family Channel on Thursday night at 8 p.m. hosts the Dove Awards for Christian music, live. Steven Curtis Chapman is up for eight awards for writing and performing music that is uplifting. . . Wonderful World of Dogs.'' Dogs as pets. On Friday, it's dogs as ambushers, hunters and killers on ``Fangs! The Savage Pack.'' . . . Saturday is the 25th observance of Earth Day and Nickelodeon is on target with Linda Ellerbee's cool special about thrashing the environment, ``The Day the Earth Threw Up,'' on Saturday at 3 p.m. A half hour later, 55 kids and Vice President Al Gore join Ellerbee for a discussion on ``Plan It For the Planet.'' Sure, kids fret about global warming and heavy stuff like that.
Spence Cook begins a new locally produced series, ``Let's Talk Flowers,'' on WPEN Monday at 11 a.m. It's Channel 62 for Cox Cable subscribers. The show also airs Wednesday and Friday at 11 a.m. and April 30 at 10 a.m. . . . A&E on Sunday at 8 p.m. takes a long, hard look at United Nations peacekeeping missions from Sarajevo to Mogadishu in ``Investigative Reports: A Soldier's Peace.'' Featured is the Canadian general (Lewis MacKenzie) who has been on nine of these operations. A&E wonders if the UN efforts have done more harm than good. The cost to U.S. taxpayers is large.
With Hollywood all caught up in crisis films about killer viruses, here comes The Learning Channel with a timely special, ``Understanding Viruses'' on Sunday at 10 p.m. It's been man vs. viruses for centuries. Are we winning? TLC will clue you in. . . . And speaking of good timing, the USA network salutes John Travolta for his Oscar nomination with ``The John Travolta Dance-a-Thon'' Thursday and Friday at 9 p.m. USA shows ``Saturday Night Fever'' and its less than dynamite sequel, ``Staying Alive.'' Dear USA: What ever happened to Travolta's dance partner, Karen Lynn Gorney?. . . Ever hear of a church where there is one service for whites, another for blacks, defying the Rev. Martin Luther King belief that integration should begin in a church pew? This unique worshipping in Indianapolis is taken up on PBS Friday night at 10 in ``Martin's Lament: Religion and Race in America.''. . . HBO's new family series, ``Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child,'' continues Sunday with ``Sleeping Beauty'' at 7:30 p.m. Next up on April 30 is ``Rapunzel'' with the voices of Whoopi Goldberg and Tisha Campbell. . . . Offbeat programming alert! MTV on Sunday at 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. presents its movie awards nomination special. Can't wait to see which couple wins Movie Kiss of the Year honors. . . . While ``NYPD Blue'' gears up for the May sweeps, Barbara Walters slips into the Tuesday night at 10 time slot on ABC with ``The Barbara Walters Special: The Price of Fame.'' The famous in sound bites include Tom Hanks, Sharon Stone and Eddie Murphy. Sure, they're good but were they ever nominated for the MTV movie awards? ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
...dramatic evacuation of Saigon
Photos
Richard Edson, left, and Bruno Kirby star in the season finale of
``Homicide: Life on the Streets,'' which airs May 5.
by CNB