THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601040038
SECTION: TELEVISION WEEK PAGE: 1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
SHORTLY AFTER her CBS drama ``New York News'' crashed and burned late last year, Mary Tyler Moore vowed she would never again appear in a series. Moore said goodbye to weekly TV, which she began doing in 1957 as the voice of Sam on ``Richard Diamond, Private Detective.''
Moore, however, is not turning her back on all television, as you will see Sunday at 7 p.m. on The Family Channel when Moore co-stars with Linda Lavin, Shirley Knight and Paul Winfield in ``Stolen
Memories: Secrets from the Rose Garden.''
It's a challenging role. Moore plays a 56-year-old woman who, as a child of 6, suffered physical and emotional trauma which left her mentally impaired. The made-for-TV film was shot in and around Wilmington, N.C.
It is roles as difficult as this which most interest Moore at this stage of her career. She left ``New York News,'' she said, because the writers had turned her character into a cartoon. The woman wants substance.
``I love to be challenged. Love to be scared by a role. I want to be anything but lovable on screen,'' Moore said when she met with TV writers in Los Angeles recently.
In fact, her part of the child-woman in ``Stolen Memories: Secrets from the Rose Garden'' is lovable in the end, and uplifting, too. The plot gets rolling when 12-year-old Freddie (Nathan Watt) arrives to spend the summer of 1956 visiting his eccentric aunts played by Moore, Knight and Lavin.
``Moore's instincts as a child within a woman are enormously true,'' said director Bob Clark.
On playing Jessie, Moore said, ``I think I was able to bring out and express the emotions locked up in a child all her life.'' Moore and the others in the cast are a bit over the top in their role-playing, and the script asks some questions that never get answered.
There are heavy moments when a lynching and child abuse are dealt with, so this is not exactly family fare on The Family Channel.
Even so, I wouldn't pass up the opportunity to see Moore.
Elsewhere as TV plunges into the first month of the new year, here are several noteworthy special events:
The excellent PBS series ``Frontline'' does an anatomy of the war that touched many in Hampton Roads with a two-part ``Frontline: The Gulf War'' starting Tuesday at 9 p.m. The ``Frontline'' producers uncovered facts that will likely surprise many viewers, including the news that President George Bush at first had little support in the U.S. military for tossing the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Part 2 runs on Wednesday night at 9. (An hour before the first ``Frontline'' airs on Tuesday, PBS gives viewers a pretty good idea what U.S. troops in Bosnia face in a ``Nova'' special, ``Terror in the Mine Fields.'')
Richard M. Nixon, whose presence towered over another war in U.S. history, is the subject of other in-depth programming on PBS and WHRO in the week to come. ``The American Experience'' on Monday at 9 p.m. presents ``Nixon,'' which features interviews with his former aides and colleagues. The A&E ``Biography'' series goes one up on PBS by presenting ``Biography: Richard M. Nixon'' on Sunday at 8 p.m. Why so much Nixon on TV? Because film maker Oliver Stone has given new life to the 37th president.
And still another war is brought back to viewers by TBS on Monday at 8:05 p.m. in ``Survivors of the Holocaust,'' a documentary produced by Steven Spielberg in association with the Survivors of the Shoa Visual History Foundation. In this logical step from his ``Schindler's List,'' Spielberg brings survivors of the Nazi death camps on camera to tell of their lives before, during and after their persecution. It was a time when Jews traded precious bread for prayer books in order to perform a Passover Seder.
Starting Saturday at 7 p.m. on WVBT, singer Lou Rawls hosts the 16th annual ``Parade of Stars Telethon'' to raise money for the United Negro College Fund. Among the entertainers scheduled to appear are Brandy, M.C. Hammer, CeCe Winans and Sheryl Lee Ralph.
And let us not forget that CBS returns to its senses, if only for a night, and installs ``Murder She Wrote'' to its old time slot on Sunday at 8 p.m. ``I like to think of it as a New Year's gift to our loyal but confused viewers,'' said star Angela Lansbury, who has been seen of late on the Turner Classic Movies channel as an 18-year-old in the thriller, ``Gaslight.''
Here's a TV flick I just know you've been waiting for - the Ivana Trump story. It's the CBS movie on Sunday at 9 after ``Murder She Wrote.'' This film, ``For Love Alone,'' is based on Trump's loosely autobiographical novel. The life and loves of the former Katrinka Kover of Prague! Is CBS this hard up?
Also on its way to a Sony near you are new episodes of a show for people who would rather remodel than move, ``Hometime,'' which WHRO will run at 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. starting Saturday. On this series, host Dean Johnson will teach you how to build a log cabin and repair your toilet, and make it all look easy . . Looking for a little escapism this weekend? E! Entertainment Television has it with ``Beverly Hills'' Sunday at 9 p.m. Go shopping on Rodeo Drive with Stephanie Powers and do lunch with Ian Ziering of ``Beverly Hills 90210'' . . . A&E on Saturday at 6 p.m. puts on ``The 39th Annual Pablo Casals Festival'' in which some of the world's foremost musicians will appear, including a 12-year old piano whiz, Helen Huang . . . Brian Dennehy is back in the role of Chicago cop Jack Reed Sunday night at 9 on NBC in ``Shadow of a Doubt.'' The film, in which Charles Dutton co-stars, starts off with a drive-by shooting. Or was it more than that? If Dennehy thinks the material here isn't up to his talents, he'll have to complain to the mirror. Dennehy helped write the script . . . On Thursday night at 10, The Discovery Channel repeats ``Time Traveler: The Lynchburg Story,'' which is about forced sterilizations at a Virginia mental hospital, which took place for more than 50 years until the practice was stopped in 1972. ILLUSTRATION: Mary Tyler Moore stars in the Family Channel movie "Stolen
Memories" Sunday night at 7.
by CNB