TV REVIEW : A GENTLE CONNECTION WITH KCET’S ‘ELEANOR’

What a very nice hour this is. Eleanor Roosevelt reaches out and touches you in the gentle, poignant and wise “Eleanor--In Her Own Words” at 9 tonight on Channels 28 and 15.

Eleanor connects through Lee Remick, whom I was prepared to dislike, only because of the gap in physical appearance. Such are Remick’s superior skills, however, that she convincingly and glowingly pulls off this one-woman play with nuance, amusement and irony, and without the false choppers worn by Jane Alexander for her two scintillating TV performances as Eleanor. It seems that the physical likeness is less critical than the spiritual likeness.

Mark Cullingham smartly directs this co-production of KCET and Taper Media Enterprises, which originated at the Mark Taper Forum’s “Sundays at the Itchey Foot” literary cabaret. Russell Vandenbroucke has adapted his original script for the small screen, and the material--running from Eleanor’s first news conference as First Lady to the late 1950s--is not only delightful, but is enhanced by the technology of TV.

Eleanor’s words are often illustrated by dream-like sequences and slowed newsreel footage that strip away the decades. The woman on the screen in a simple red dress and pearls, revealing bits of herself and her times through her observations of others, is an accomplished diplomat, humanitarian and American, always endearing, always invigorating.