Kraft Premiere Movie a Mother's Gift
((Sun. (16), 9-11 p.m., CBS))
Cast: Nancy McKeon, Adrian Pasdar, Lucy Deakins, Jeremy London, Max Wright, Judith Hoag, Randle Mell, Beata Pozniak, Adam Storke, Dan Brook, Helen Cates, James Prince, Gail Cronauer, David Denney, James Fisher, Bill Gribble, Daniel Gullahorn, Tim Simek, Moses Starr, Christina Stojanovich.
Programmed against the first installment of "James A. Michener's Texas" (perhaps by the same people who slotted "Chicago Hope" against "ER"), this gentle film directed by Jerry London seems bound for obscurity.
CBS' title department must have been working overtime to come up with the generic "A Mother's Gift" for the generic drama; the script was adapted from Bess Streeter Aldrich's much more memorably titled "A Lantern in Her Hand."
Nancy McKeon stars in the story of a family helping develop the Nebraska Territory following the Civil War. After a few hardships, Mom has to grit her teeth and take it on by herself.
Growing up in Iowa, Abbie (McKeon) is torn between her boyfriend, medical student Ed (Adam Storke) and her best friend, Will (Adrian Pasdar). Both wind up fighting for the Union, and Will comes home first, proposing a trip to Nebraska.
Even though she's betrothed to Ed and set on a career singing opera, Abbie takes off for the wilderness with Will. Accept that, and everything else comes easy.
Despite tipping their covered wagon in the stream and encountering a pack of (as it turns out) friendly Pawnee, Abbie and Will soon own hundreds of acres of land and a huge home in the town of Buffalo Wallow.
An outbreak of "fever" hits, and guess who is the only doctor to answer the town's advertisement for a resident physician? When Ed shows up, widowed, he comes on to Abbie and arouses Will's jealousy.
That's all cleared up with a stern talk, and the next crisis (also solved in short order) is that greedy Will, who's overextended himself financially to buy still more land, can't get a loan. Good thing their son (Jeremy London) has become a banker, isn't it?
In the meantime, even though Mom has forced her to study piano for years and she's been accepted by a conservatory in New York, spunky daughter Isobelle (Lucy Deakins) reveals to everybody's great surprise that she would rather stay in Ox Wallow and marry her childhood friend Gus (Randle Mell).
Script, by Earl Hamner, Don Sipes and Joe Wisenfeld, is awkwardly developed; what could have been a suspenseful relationship between Abbie, Ed and Will is given away at top of show, which then flashes back to the triangle, and Isobelle's conflict is hidden from the audience until the last minute.
The writing is sometimes melodramatic ("I'm sorry about what happened 10 years ago," Abbie tells Ed. "I needed to hearthat," he replies. "I needed to say that," she counters.) but dialogue is generally well-written, none more eloquent than the lines -- ending the story -- that gave Aldrich her original title.
Performances are solid throughout, though the vidpic really belongs to McKeon (ready for all those leftover Melissa Gilbert scripts), Pasdar and Storke.
A strong actress, McKeon is weakest in her portrayal of a potential (and, per the script, talented) opera singer (Abbie evidently only knows one song, a "traditional" ballad written for "Gift" by Barry and Lisa Blue Fasman).
Texas locations sub for Nebraska, and tech credits (particularly John Frick's handsome production design) are fine.
Camera, Denis Lewiston; editor , Michael Brown; production designer, John Frick; art director, Adele Plauche; sound, Vince Garcia; music, Lee Holdridge.
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