Banking on a Novel Approach

Moviemakers have been doing it for decades. First buy a bestselling novel--something long and juicy, maybe, like Gone With the Wind. Then hire seasoned scriptwriters, a cast of stars, and put it all on the screen. Presto! Bookstore sales become box office receipts.

Now the Hollywood method has come to the home screen and quickly grown into a full-fledged entertainment movement. TV versions of Taylor Caldwell's Captains and the Kings, Arthur Hailey's The Moneychangers and Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle have been aired in the past few months, and at least a dozen more books are moving from the bestseller lists onto the tube.

Among the more ambitious efforts will be ABC's twelve-hour serialization of Alex Haley's Roots, scheduled to start on Jan. 23. A semifictional history, Roots traces Haley's ancestry from Kunta Kinte, a Mandinka African youth captured by slave traders in 1767. ABC has invested more than $6 million in the production, which will be televised over eight consecutive evenings--a scheduling experiment matched only by ABC's coverage of the 1976 Summer Olympics.

The series stretches from Kinte's African boyhood through his offspring's torturous rise from slavery in America. Unglamorized and at times disturbingly stark, Roots features Cicely Tyson as Kinte's mother, Maya Angelou as his grandmother, John Amos as Kinte in middle age, and Ben Vereen as his grandson. Kinte as a teenager will be portrayed by LeVar Burton, 19, a U.S.C. sophomore and acting novice. To give the somber story line additional star power, such big names as Lorne Greene, Lloyd Bridges, Chuck Connors, O.J. Simpson, Leslie Uggams and Doug McClure will appear in small roles.

British Beginnings. This sort of generational drama, though in tamer form, has long been a staple of British television in series like The Forsyte Saga and, more recently, The Pallisers. The latter, based on the novels of Anthony Trollope and starring Emmy Winner Susan Hampshire, will begin on PBS stations in the U.S. this month. The big three American networks did not show much interest in this approach until last February, when ABC gambled $5.5 million on a twelve-part adaptation of Irwin Shaw's Rich Man, Poor Man. Shaw's saga of self-made Millionaire Rudy Jordache and his black-sheep brother eventually collected 23 Emmy nominations and helped boost ABC past its network rivals.

"Rich Man, Poor Man was really the start," concedes Paul Monash, who produced Carrie for the movies before joining CBS last October. After a late start, his network bought up the TV rights to John Dean's Blind Ambition, John Hersey's The Wall and Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls. NBC has kept pace with series plans for Seventh Avenue, by Norman Bogner, and Wheels, by Arthur Hailey. Not resting on its ratings, ABC has hired Roots Producer Stan Margulies for a ten-hour version of Hawaii, by James Michener. Washington, a series based on John Ehrlichman's roman a clef, The Company, has already gone before the cameras with Actors Jason Robards and Robert Vaughn.

Better Billing. For authors, television no longer rates second billing after the movies. The Rich Man, Poor Man series made a believer of Irwin Shaw by generating sales of 4 million RMPM paperbacks. Convinced of Roots' promise, the network bought Haley's manuscript before it was even completed. "Alex Haley's dream was that his book would be made into a movie," says Roots Producer Margulies. "He agreed to television for two reasons. He could see more of his book on the screen, and television can reach the greatest number of people."

With the networks investing $3 million to $6 million in each of the series, the result has been glossier productions, higher salaries--and a greater attraction for movie actors. "It offers a chance for a respectable actor to do a TV role that you can deepen and broaden," says Cinema Veteran Christopher Plummer, who starred opposite Kirk Douglas in The Moneychangers. "Also, it doesn't tie you down over two years like a regular series."

Television still has not nabbed bigger box office draws like Warren Beatty, who turned down $500,000 to portray Howard Hughes in a CBS four-parter. But the trend is clear. Says NBC Vice President Joseph Taritero: "The big stars will have to listen. There is just no limit to what a network will pay if they want someone."

There may be a limit, however, to the networks' imaginations. Having exhausted the subplots of Irwin Shaw's novel, ABC has returned with its own version, titled Rich Man, Poor Man--Book II. As a regular weekly series, it shows signs of ossifying into familiar soap-opera motifs of familial rivalry and spicy infidelity. If the networks fail with Roots, Hawaii and the more imaginative books, they will surely fall back on formulas that worked in the past. Literary potboilers will turn into just another genre of televised pap. "They'll do it, and they'll do it well, and then they'll do it over again," says Actor Plummer. "And then, of course, it will explode."

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