War and Remembrance (TV miniseries)

War and Remembrance
Television miniseries opening titles
Genre	War
Created by	Herman Wouk
Written by	Dan Curtis Earl W. Wallace Herman Wouk
Directed by	Dan Curtis
Starring	Robert Mitchum Jane Seymour Hart Bochner Victoria Tennant Sharon Stone Topol Steven Berkoff Robert Hardy John Gielgud Peter Graves
Narrated by	William Woodson
Theme music composer	Bob Cobert
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English and German, Hebrew, Polish, Russian
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	12
Production
Executive producer(s)	Dan Curtis
Producer(s)	Barbara Steele
Editor(s)	John F. Burnett Peter Zinner
Location(s)	Auschwitz, Montreal, USS New Jersey, many locations in Europe and United States
Cinematography	Bernie Abramson
Running time	1620 minutes
Production company(s)	ABC Circle Films Dan Curtis Productions Jadran Film Paramount Television
Distributor	Disney-ABC Domestic Television
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	November 13, 1988 (1988-11-13) – May 14, 1989 (1989-05-14)
Chronology
Preceded by	The Winds of War

DVD cover

War and Remembrance is an American miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Herman Wouk. It is the sequel to highly successful The Winds of War. It continues the story of the extended Henry family and the Jastrow family starting on December 15, 1941 and ending on August 6, 1945.

Cast

Several actors were changed between The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. Actor John Houseman played Aaron Jastrow in Winds of War, but was too frail for War and Remembrance's lengthy production schedule. He died of spinal cancer in 1988, the year War and Remembrance was broadcast. He was replaced by John Gielgud. Jane Seymour was cast as Mrs. Natalie Henry in place of Ali MacGraw after Seymour campaigned for the role and made a screen test. Dan Curtis was struck by her performance and immediately cast her in the vital role. Because the miniseries was shot out of sequence, producers could not cut Jane Seymour's hair for the scenes in the concentration camp. Make-up artists took shears to a full scalp wig for her to wear for those scenes instead.

The actor Jan-Michael Vincent, who played Byron Henry in the Winds of War, was busy in the American television series Airwolf as an action lead. It is hinted in the featurette on the Winds of War DVDs that Vincent's drinking made him difficult on set. He was replaced by Hart Bochner. Other major replacements include Sharon Stone as Janice, Leslie Hope as Madeleine, Michael Woods as Warren, Robert Morley as Alistair Tudsbury, Barry Bostwick as Aster and Steven Berkoff replacing Gunther Meisner as Adolf Hitler. William Woodson again serves as narrator.

• Robert Mitchum — Capt. Victor "Pug" Henry
• Jane Seymour — Natalie Henry
• Hart Bochner — Byron Henry
• Victoria Tennant — Pamela Tudsbury
• Polly Bergen — Rhoda Henry
• David Dukes — Leslie Slote
• Michael Woods — Warren Henry
• Sharon Stone — Janice Henry
• Robert Morley — Alistair Tudsbury
• Barry Bostwick — Carter "Lady" Aster
• Sami Frey — Avram Rabinovitz
• Topol — Berel Jastrow
• John Rhys-Davies — Sammy Mutterperl
• Ian McShane — Philip Rule
• William Schallert — Harry Hopkins
• Bill Wallis — Werner Beck
• Jeremy Kemp — Brig. Gen. Armin von Roon
• Robert Stephens — SS Major Karl Rahm
• Steven Berkoff — Adolf Hitler
• Milton Johns — Adolf Eichmann
• E. G. Marshall — Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Robert Hardy — Winston Churchill
• Ralph Bellamy — Franklin D. Roosevelt
• John Gielgud — Aaron Jastrow
• Peter Graves — Palmer Kirby
• Barry Morse — Col. Gen. Franz Halder
• Hardy Krüger — Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
• Leslie Hope — Madeline Henry
• Günther Maria Halmer — Rudolf Höss
• John Malcolm — Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
• Eddie Albert — Breckinridge Long
• Kenneth Colley — Col. Paul Blobel
• Sky du Mont — Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
• Richard Dysart — Harry S. Truman
• Lawrence Dobkin — General George Patton
• John Dehner — Admiral Ernest King
• Pat Hingle — Admiral William "Bull" Halsey
• William Prince — Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
• Wolfgang Reichmann — Martin Bormann
• G. D. Spradlin — Admiral Raymond A. Spruance

Production

Since Wouk was happy with the Winds of War adaptation, he allowed Dan Curtis to adapt the sequel as well. The story became a successful mini-series on the ABC television network in 1988, in which several main characters were played by different actors than in The Winds Of War.

It had to be broken into two segments, chapters I–VII and VIII–XII ("The Final Chapter") with a combined running time of about 30 hours. Former concentration-camp internee Branko Lustig was a producer on the series. The visual design and cinematography was praised for its unflinching presentation.

A major sponsor of the miniseries was Ford Motors. Another was Nike.

This huge two-part miniseries was said to have been the 'last of the miniseries.' War and Remembrance had a multi-year production timeline, and it took over ABC's broadcast schedule for two one-week periods in 1988 as well as 1989. Miniseries had been major events on American television, reserved for "important" stories like Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1968). Shortly after this period, cable television began the fragmentation of the United States broadcasting audience in earnest, leaving War and Remembrance as the last of the giant miniseries. In previous years, there were only the Big Three broadcasting networks in the United States, ABC, NBC and CBS.

The former's decision to dedicate two weeks of its broadcasting schedule to War and Remembrance was a big financial investment. It became the costliest single-story undertaking in United States television, costing $104 million and totalling 30 prime-time hours. There were also contractual restrictions on advertising: Herman Wouk had approval on all ads, and certain Holocaust sequences had to run uninterrupted.

Filmed from January 1986 to September 1987, the 1,492 page script (by Earl W. Wallace, Dan Curtis, and Herman Wouk) contained 2,070 scenes. There were 757 sets: 494 in Europe, including France, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, West Germany, England, and Poland, and 263 in the United States (including Hawaii) and Canada. There were 358 speaking parts in the script; 30,310 extras were employed in Europe and 11,410 in the United States. It was the first film production granted permission to film inside the Auschwitz concentration camp. Scenes set in Russia were filmed in Montreal in temperatures reaching 40 degrees below zero Celsius.

Members of the United States Army, stationed in Berchtesgaden, West Germany, at the time of the filming were hired as extras for some of the Eagle's Nest (Kehlsteinhaus) scenes. Several actual Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors were cast as extras for the Auschwitz-Birkenau selection sequence. The battleships USS New Jersey and USS Alabama, as well as the aircraft carrier USS Lexington were used for filming.

Although Paramount Television (production studio behind the original Winds of War series) was involved with this sequel, it was primarily an in-house production of ABC, which had also aired the original series. The rights to this series are now jointly owned by the Dan Curtis Estate, MPI Home Video, and The Walt Disney Company (current owners of ABC).

Reception

There were general criticisms levelled against the series. For instance, that the star Robert Mitchum, while able and well cast, was by now too old at 71 for the May–December romance between his character and Pamela Tudsbury. He himself remarked that the sequel to Winds Of War should be filmed sooner rather than later since he was not getting any younger. In the novel he would have been approximately 50, having served on destroyers in the Atlantic during World War I. Still, his star power balances the grim subject of the European theatre. He also provided needed continuity in the series, which suffered from a number of significant personnel changes.

War and Remembrance received 15 Emmy Award nominations and won for best miniseries, special effects and single-camera production editing. The miniseries was nominated for Emmy Awards for best actor (John Gielgud), actress (Jane Seymour) and supporting actress (Polly Bergen). John Gielgud and Barry Bostwick both won Golden Globe awards.

External links

• War and Remembrance at the Internet Movie Database
• War and Remembrance at AllRovi