From These Roots

[danfling]

Actor Robert Mandan has passed away.

[Paul Raven]

Aug 12 1958

Len Wayland (Buck) and Julie Bovasso (Rose) were married during lunch break.

[Paul Raven]

Julie Bovasso, known for her walk out minutes before airtime on FTR apparently remained as feisty in later years...

 

The preview performance of Julie Bovasso’s Angelo's Wedding on 11 May 1985 imploded after an altercation between the playwright and the staff of Marshall Mason's Off-Broadway Circle Repertory. Bovasso, then almost fifty-five years old, attended the performance against the explicit wishes of the production team; the rehearsal period had been fraught. Suspecting unauthorized cuts, Bovasso took a seat in the audience, but then, midshow, confronted the backstage crew and demanded the chance to give the actors notes. The staff refused. At the start of the third act, Bovasso changed tactics: she alighted the stage and instructed the audience to leave the theatre. Members of the crew blocked her access to the actors, leading to a physical altercation, a 911 call, and, eventually, her forced eviction from the theatre.

[Paul Raven]

[Paul Raven]

Len Wayland and Susan Brown

 

Mary Alice Moore and David Sanders

 

[danfling]

Actress Ann Flood, who played the show's heroine Elizabeth "Liz" Fraser Allen on From These Roots, passed away on October 7.

[danfling]

Here's a TV Guide article from 1969 on Millette Alexander

This lady has a 17 room house, four children, six dogs, seven cats and a soap opera career, too -  by Judith Jobin

“Soap opera at its worst can  be black-and-white—but most of the time the characters are as a real and the conflicts are ones the average person really deals with. I’m proud of it and I'm livid because the industry ignores it. There are no Emmys for soaps!'

So says actress Millette Alexander—looking authentically angry—as she defends her membership in television’s much maligned soap-opera club. And it might smack of a case of sour suds if it came from a lesser talent. But by all accounts, Miss Alexander plays  soaps with a degree of involvement and intensity usually reserved, in an image-conscious profession, for more prestigious theatrical endeavors. The case in point is her latest role, a young, attractive lady doctor. For the past six months Millette has been feeling her way around the psyche of Sara McIntyre, M.D., one of the central characters on CBS’s The Guiding Light. Says producer Peter Andrews: ‘‘She’s quite an intelligent girl and she works very hard in preparation—much more than most. She always has a point of view—she has the whole edifice of her role constructed by the time she gets in.”

On the surface, the action is uncomplicated: Millette puts in upwards of 40 hours a week alternately clucking over patients and getting into clinches with a handsome colleague. But under the clucking and clinching is “much more than the words say,’ insists Edge of Night actress Teri Keane, who remembers Millette’s nimble portrayal of a dual role on that series. “She's complex. There's nothing surfacey about her acting.”” And a Guiding Light actor agrees, pointing admiringly to her ‘‘emotional quicksilver quality.”

But at this point, an inevitable question leaps out: after 15 years of landing television, Broadway and summer-theater roles with ease and regularity, why isn’t Millette Alexander more famous, a little closer to stardom?

“She could definitely have it if she tried,’ declares producer Andrews, confirming that her talent is widely acknowledged in the trade. Teri Keane agrees: ‘‘Absolutely. She's tops. But she doesn’t want it.” And Millette herself, recalling an early offer from 20th Century-Fox, confers a convincing air of distastefulness on the whole business: “They wanted me to sign a seven-year contract, move to California, become a starlet.I didn’t want to be locked in.” Her friend Ed Zimmermann explains: ‘‘l’d say she wants most to do good work.” Finally, Andrews points to her off-stage existence: ‘‘She thinks a lot about her home life.”

By any standard, it’s a life worth thinking about. At 35, she’s married to rangy Jimmy Hammerstein. He is the son of Oscar Hammerstein 2nd, is a respected director in his own right (most recently of a pair of off-Broadway Pinter plays), and was. undeniably a catch. They live in a 17-room Stanford White house in Nyack, N.Y., complete with a six-acre spread of rolling lawns, fruit-tree orchards, greenhouse, lavish swimming pool, and hilltop gazebo overlooking the Hudson River. Their four children are abundantly rosy-cheeked and well-fed. And they solved their servant problem by importing an entire family from Honduras—but the bargain included five more children and an  88-year-old grandmother, all of whom live-in.

After that the law of diminishing returns takes over and things look a bit raffish at the edges. There’s a bright red four-wheel-drive jeep in the driveway, and unwary visitors are assaulted by a friendly tangle of six dogs and seven cats. A tour of the interior turns up stray dolls and hobby horses, jars of freshly made fruit preserves in the kitchen, a pair of well-used pianos, an alarming assortment of electronic instruments and an open Dickens volume in the bathroom. Not to mention sound effects—the indecorous clatter of nine children, plus sputtering balloon sounds and Indian yells.

It all looks disarmingly like a television headache commercial featuring Millette as its miscast heroine. As keeper of the house and grounds, and Big Mama to that brood, she’s more like the earthy old lady who lived in a shoe than an other-worldly Cinderella. ‘‘! don’t even nose-count any more,” she laughs.

“She looks like quite a socialite,” says Teri Keane, ‘‘but she can get down there in the garden and weed!” And that’s not just a figure of speech. In off hours, Millette weeds with gusto, dips deeply into art and music (she’s a highly skilled pianist, also plays violin), finds time for exquisite needlepoint projects and generally has a disconcerting affinity for over-achievement. “She's got a helluva lot of energy,”’ says one friend, and another adds, “It must be pretty exhausting.”

Which raises a final question: How did an admittedly ‘“‘overly sensible’’ teenager from the Great Neck (Long Island) High School Orchestra find her way from first-chair violin to the center of such a helter-skelter life?

“I finally got sensible about myself,” she explains happily.

[Paul Raven]

Newsday (Nassau Edition) Mar 31 1961

 Writer of TV Soap Operas Gives Synopsis of His Life By Len Chaimowitz

Glen Cove —Television dramatist Leonard Stadd has found after six months of doing it that life can be beautiful writing soap operas. Stadd,35, has been busy at it eight hours daily since he wrote his first script for "From These Roots” an NBC daytime serial (3:30 FM) "I’m more than suite satisfied with writing soap operas” Stadd said yesterday "because I’ve always considered TV a great training ground for a dramatist And writing soap operas gives me a chance to change any dramatic situations that just don’t develop the way they should It’s totally unlike one-shot TV dramas (which he also has done) that don’t give you any opportunity to re-work plot situations”

He said that in those dramas such as an "Ellery Queen” episode that he wrote he didn't have a second chance to alter a plot once it was on the air. Before he latched on to his present full-time assignment Stadd was a free-lance TV writer living in Manhattan with his wife Arlene an actress and son Robbie now 5. But last summer he discovered after three years in TV that he had to head for Hollywood and its multitudinous TV series if he wanted to really catch on as a TV writer.

"But then this job developed after I called Eugene Burr (an NBC vice president) to tell him I was heading for Hollywood. He said ‘Oh no not you too’ — then he had me write two pilot scripts for new daytime serials. Next thing I found myself writing ‘From these Roots’ when its two writers left”.Stadd said His first script went on the air Sept 26 and today’s marks his 110th.

Before he started writing the scripts the show was threatened with extinction.Since then its ratings have improved, Stadd said. Once Stadd learned he would be working fulltime on "From These Roots” he began to look for a house where he could get the work done on time. He found it in Glen Cove and doesn’t commute to Manhattan unless he has a story conference or as happened earlier this week his typewriter breaks down and needs repair. "Usually” Stadd said "if I can finish a script by 5:30 PM I hustle it over to the post office and send it special delivery to the studio Or if my wife is going into town the next day I'll ask her to drop it off at the studio or my agent's or at any one of a number of pre-arranged ‘drops' — drugstores, foodstores and the like Then I’ll call the producer and let him know where he can find the script”

[Paul Raven]

FTR trivia - due to a power failure in Manhattan, Mon Aug 17 1959, From These Roots and Young Dr Malone were off the air for that day.

NBC hurriedly replaced them with a repeat 'I Take Thee', an NBC News Special.

For the record FTR cast list as of Sept 1959 from an NBC press release.

Liz Fraser played by Susan Brown

Ben Fraser . Rod Hendrickson

Emily Benson. . . Helen Shields

Lydia Benson... Sarah Hardy

Jim Benson ... Henderson Forsythe

Ben Fraser Jr. . Frank Marth

Rose Fraser. . .  Julie Bovasso

Dan Fraser. ...Dana White

Dr. Buck Weaver...   Len Wayland

Kass ... Vera Allen

Tim Benson ...John Stewart

Judge Tompkins...Noel Leslie

Peggy Tompkins....  Ellen Madison

Maggie ...  Billie Lou Watt

David Allen. . .  Robert Mandan

Louisa Corelli...Dolores Sutton

Mr. Vail ... Bill Smith

Fred Barnes ....Paul McGrath

Mildred Barnes...Doris Dalton

Paul Hyams ...   Frank Milan

Col . Tomkins . . .Ward Costello

Laura Tomkins . .Audra Lindley

Dr. Mc Andrew...Edgar Stehli

 

Edited October 31, 2024 by Paul Raven

[dc11786]

Thanks @Paul Raven for this. It answers a question I had regarding Dr. Enoch McAndrews. The original actor Charles Egleston passed away in December, 1958. I wasn't sure if the character was written out or recast. It's good to see he was recast.  

I think that's a new actor for Judge Tompkins. The Tompkins family is much bigger than I expected. 

Edited October 31, 2024 by dc11786

[Paul Raven]

Variety review.

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[DRW50]

Thanks. Wish anything of this would show up.

The jargon of some in that area can be interesting. Never heard them talk of "meller" (melodrama).