Sunday, November 21, 1999
Last of 'Sarah' trilogy great TV literature
BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Television has promoted great literature to the mass audience for 50 years, but seldom has it inspired it. A rare exception are the two sequels to Sarah, Plain and Tall, including Sarah, Plain and Tall: Winter's End premiering on CBS today (9 p.m., Channels 12, 7).
Author Patricia MacLachlan, who won a prestigious Newbery Medal for Sarah in 1986, did not plan on writing the sequels until the first Sarah was produced by actress Glenn Close in 1991 for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It is the highest-rated TV movie of this decade.
“Patty MacLachlan and I came up with (this idea) when we did the first one. I always thought it would be great to have a trilogy,” says Ms. Close, star and executive producer of the three Sarah movies.
But the sequels, Skylark (1993) and Winter's End, were written first as screenplays by Ms. MacLachlan.
Winter's End, which has not been adapted into a novel yet, features Jack Palance as Sarah's long-lost father-in-law who had abandoned his son, Jacob (Christopher Walken), at a young age. Sarah, the mail-order bride, struggles to keep the Witting family together in 1918, during a Kansas blizzard, flu epidemic and start of World War I.
The two women had agreed the third — and likely final — Sarah would take place in winter, after two films set in summer. They were also intrigued by having the estranged father disrupt the Witting household, says Ms. Close, whose will next star in The Ballad of Lucy Whipple for CBS and 102 Dalmatians for Disney.
Winter's End was delayed for a year because Ms. MacLachlan was ill, says Ms. Close, who did not elaborate. “She was the only person we ever wanted to write it.”
She is proud that her Hallmark films have inspired literature and encouraged children to read.
“Sarah, Plain and Tall is taught in practically every elementary school across the country,” she says. “The children read about it on the page, and then it's expanded visually for them when they see it on video.”
When the book is finished, Winter's End should become part of the curriculum, too, she says.
“I hope that this ends up being taught in school as well, because I think this will be a wonderful learning tool,” she says.
“(It) is teaching history, as well as telling a good story.”
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