From These Roots

[Paul Raven]

"From these roots grow branch, leaf and flower, children of the sheltering earth, ripening into the tumult of the seasons - generation unto generation."

Created by John Pickard and Frank Provo

Directed by Leonard Valenta and Joseph Behar

Associate Director: Barbara Searles

Produced and Directed by: Don Wallace and Paul Lammers

Headwriter: Leonard Stadd

Location: Strathfield, New England

Newspaper: Strathfield Record

Cast:

Liz Fraser Allen (ANN FLOOD/SUSAN BROWN - temp 1959)

Ben Fraser, Sr. (JOSEPH McCAULEY 1961)

(ROD HENDRICKSON 1958-1961)

(GRANT CODE 1958)

Ben Fraser, Jr. (FRANK MARTH)

Rose Corelli Fraser (TRESA HUGHES 1960-1961)

(JULIE BOVASSO 1958-1960)

Jim Benson (HENDERSON FORSYTHE)

Emily Fraser Benson (HELEN SHIELDS)

Lyddy Benson (SARAH HARDY)

Bruce Crawford (BYRON SANDERS)

Dr. Buck Weaver (LEN WAYLAND)

Maggie Barker Weaver (BILLIE LOU WATT)

Stanley Kreiser (LEON JANNEY)

Enid Chambers Allen (MARY ALICE MOORE)

David Allen (ROBERT MANDAN)

Lyn Franklyn Jennings (BARBARA BERJER)

Tom Jennings (CRAIG HUEBING)

Laura Tompkins (AUDRA LINDLEY)

Peggy Tompkins Benson (ELLEN MADISON 1959-1961)

(URSULA STEVENS 1959)

(MAE MUNRO 1958-1959)

Nate Tompkins (WARD COSTELLO)

Fred Barnes (TOM SHIRLEY)

Jack Lander (JOSEPH MASCOLO)

Gloria Saxon (MILLETTE ALEXANDER)

Hilda Furman (CHARLOTTE RAE)

Jimmy Hull (JOHN COLENBACK)

Luisa Corelli (DOLORES SUTTON)

Artie Corelli (FRANK CAMPANELLA)

Frank Teton (GEORGE SMITH)

Jamie (ALAN HOWARD)

Richard (RICHARD THOMAS)

Kass the housekeeper (VERA ALLEN)

George Weimer (DONALD MADDEN)

Tim Benson (JOHN STEWART)

Dan Fraser (DAN WHITE)

Lance (DAVID DANIELS)

[DRW50]

Thanks. I wonder if this was the only soap set in New England.

I didn't remember Susan Brown temped for Ann Flood (I wonder if that was Susan's daytime debut).

Was this Tresa's only soap role aside from Another World?

[Paul Raven]

Thank you for the article above. I wonder if that couple stayed together?

According to IMDB she also played a nurse on RH.

[All My Shadows]

Isn't DAYS set in New England? Passions and Return to Peyton Place definitely were.

[DRW50]

Oh that's right I forgot about Passions.

I thought Salem was set in limbo or some unknown place.

[All My Shadows]

LOL! McTavish can use some of those Purgatory stories on DAYS should she ever get a job there (now I have to hide from angry DAYS fans).

For some reason, New England is one of the first places I think of when I think stereotypical soap location even though there haven't been a whole lot set there. I think there are probably some short-lived 50s soaps that were New England-based.

[Bright Eyes]

Salem has never established itself as being in a certain state, but early descriptions of the series place Salem in New England.

[DRW50]

In a September 1984 Digest, John Kelly Genovese remembers "From These Roots."

[dc11786]

I had read about the Richard Thomas' story, but i've never seen anyone listed as playing the character's brother.

I believe the 'later writers' Genovese refers to includes John M. Young, who wrote 'Right to Happiness.' I can see how this story sounds like a story that would play out on 'Right to Happiness' with the criminal element fighting the good natured, noble townspeople.

[DRW50]

Thanks for the extra detail. I wish we could see Young's run.

[DRW50]

July 1961 TV Radio Mirror

[DRW50]

as it is. "Housewives simply are interested in everything that interests other women," says writer Stedd, who continues: "There are two central characters in From These Roots - Liz and David. But we are not only telling the story of two people. We tell the story of an entire family, the entire town of Strathfield, and all their complex inter-relationships. It's a story that never really began and will never end. It goes on and on, as families go on and on.

"There is no rigid pattern. We don't say, 'This is the only way it is - today, tomorrow and forever.' I write the scripts according to the way the story unfolds. If a character begins to get more interesting, to 'take over' - and often it's the viewers who first call this to my attention - then I build up the part. Nothing has to remain static."

Healthy family relationships are a basic quality of the drama. There is the relationship of the father, Ben Fraser, to the younger members of the family...Ben is what the world calls an elderly man, but still active, still looking forward, still pulling his own weight. There is Kass, the Fraser housekeeper...Kass is an individual in her own right, not merely someone who walks in and out, serving coffee or answering telephones and doorbells. She mothered Liz after Mrs. Fraser died; when Kass herself was ill, the entire family was caught up in the concern for her.

There is the excellent relationship between Liz and her older sister Emily: "Here are sisters quite unlike in temperament and experience, yet able to have deep love and understanding between them, and to talk to each other on their own terms."

Emily's own relationship with her daughter Lyddy is also a good one. Emily has come to grips with herself after some stormy years. She has now become a point of identification with many viewers around her age. Emily has lived through a period when she suffered from pseudocyesis (spurious pregnancy), caused by the shock of believing she had lost her husband's love and the need to have another child to forge a new link in their marriage. Although she recovered, she became a widow shortly after, and has developed as one of the most interesting characters in the story.

Problems - often among those encountered by many viewers themselves - are met head-on. The whole question of the adoption of older children (the so-called "unadoptables") is one of these. When Maggie and Dr. Buck Weaver decided to adopt an infant - and were led, instead ,into adopting not only a five-year-old boy but his six-year-old "problem" brother - the mail increased from "adopted" parents who were particularly interested in the emergencies, problems and rewards of such adoptions, as depicted on their TV sets.

The subject of "black market" babies was treated with equal frankness, and both the producer and the writer felt they had rendered a service by airing the whole question in terms of human drama.

From These Roots has dealt with juvenile delinquency. Medical emergencies have occurred. "I don't believe we have to bring in a lot of diseases or dwell too much on medical procedures. When Kass required a brain operation," Stadd points out, "that was an integral part of the plot. I talked to doctors before I wrote the hospital scenes. Kass had hit her head and injured blood vessels. This happens. The operation is the cure. It was all completely true to medicine - and to life."

An interesting sidelight on the operation is the number of messages that poured in, asking to have Kass get well. "Don't let Kass die," they begged Len Wayland, who plays Dr. Weaver - and who notes: "They wanted me to see, personally, that Kass came out all right. I don't think they quite trusted the writer or the producer. They went directly to the doctor!"

"We try to make our show a healthy one," Stadd explains. "Where a character needs to undergo psychiatric treatment, as Emily did for a time, it was used as the great, modern tool it has become. But we steer away from psychiatric terminology. People today are familiar with psychological medicine. They know something about the treatment of the mentally disturbed. But that's no reason for bringing in into the story merely to resolve some situation."

Humor and fun also have their place in any drama that is true to life. Sometimes that is projected, on the show, through father Ben Fraser, who loves to "pull the leg" of some other member of the family until he gets the laugh he's angling for.

"The great thing we try to bring out," says Stadd, "is that people who live together - in a family, a community, in any group - are bound to have arguments, strong differences of opinion. But underlying these is the respect - more than that, the love - they have for one another. On daytime TV serials, people aren't ashamed of that world 'love.'

"Perhaps their emotions seem stronger because we have more time to portray them in depth. All the dramatic elements of a good nighttime drama can be shown, but there is greater opportunity to explore them. Our story doesn't need to be hurried along. What we can't do today, we can do tomorrow."

Leonard Stadd fully realizes how much the writer is aided by good production and direction, and by having fine actors to interpret his words. Eugene Burr is the producer of From These Roots, and Paul Lammers directs. All work together closely. "No matter what I write, nothing would happen without all of them and all their help."

Stadd speaks out of personal experience, as both actor and member of a family "team." Not too successful, at first, as a writer of short stories and magazine articles in New York, he became interested in TV while working for an agent for playwrights. "I read hundreds of TV scripts," he says, "and kept telling myself I could do better. So I had to prove it." He has - not only as sole writer of From These Roots, but in previous stings for such shows as Ellery Queen, NBC Matinee Theater, and The Verdict Is Yours.

Behind his current success is the woman he credits with starting it all: His wife Arlene. Born thirty-five years ago in Baltimore, Maryland. Leonard met Arlene while doing a little-theater production there. It was she who read his early writings and encouraged him to take courses at Johns Hopkins. And, when she left to study drama at Carnegie Institute, he followed - to major in writing at the University of Pittsburgh nearby. They were married during Christmas recess, now have a son Robbie, who was five last April.

"Robbie plunged Arlene into semi-retirement," the writer says. "But, last winter - just to keep her hand in - she did a bit part in From These Roots. She played a nurse when Kass was ill...and a male fan of the show immediately asked, 'Who was the new nurse? Wow!'"

[Paul Raven]

In September 1960,Pickard and Provo quit the show due to 'unwillingness to write under editorial supervision'.Guess this means that NBC wanted more say now they owned the show.That's when Stadd took over.

[DRW50]

How long after this article did they fire Stadd?

Apparently his wife went on to quite a bit of TV writing.

[Paul Raven]

Will try and find out about Stadd's departure.

In May 1960,NBC announced that FTR would be cancelled in October to make way for repeats of the Danny Thomas show.They shelled out $7,000,000.Variety said that FTR was close to cancellation before ,but the acquiring of Thomas reruns sounded it's death knell.NBC had been experiencing success with Loretta Young reruns,so was willing to take the chance with Thomas.

Anyway,that didn't happen and FTR was granted a reprieve.Thomas was put up against ATWT at 1.30