The Kennedy Legend Comes to the Little Screen in 1989 : The Family Cooperated Even Though the Miniseries Doesn’t Pull Many Punches

The making of a President 1988 was pretty hot news in the land of Michael Dukakis, but there’s also been considerable local interest in the making of “The Kennedys of Massachusetts.”

The six-hour miniseries for ABC is based on “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,” a history of the famous families, published last year by author-scholar Doris Kearns Goodwin.

The saga has its own Hollywood aspect: Joseph P. Kennedy’s foray into the film business and his widely known affair with Gloria Swanson is one of the episodes.

Six years in development, “The Fitzgerald and the Kennedys” got a green light because the strike by the Writers Guild of America left the networks pressed for programming; the miniseries initially was fast-tracked for the network’s fall schedule, probably to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy on Tuesday, but it’s now tentatively scheduled for broadcast in February, 1989.

The project had been shooting on locations in and around here since July, moved to Los Angeles as a backdrop for the elder Kennedy’s Hollywood years of the 1920s and ‘30s and has now wrapped. The scenes include a steamy bedroom episode between Kennedy and Swanson in a Hollywood Hills mansion that was cast as her home of the time.

(After buying out a film distribution and production company, Film Booking Offices of America, in 1926, Kennedy went on to produce a series of “B” movies, eventually becoming president of Pathe Exchange (later RKO), where he served as executive producer on several Swanson films, most notably the ill-fated “Queen Kelly.”)

But the Kennedy family itself--particularly 98-year-old matriarch Rose Kennedy--also was instrumental in enabling both the author and the producers to tell this latest version of the Kennedy legend. This, despite the fact that Doris Kearns Goodwin pulls few punches in chronicling the darker sides of Camelot.

In addition to the Swanson affair, both the book and the series deal with Rose’s early flirtation with Socialism; Joe Sr.’s decision to lobotomize their daughter, Rosemary, without Rose’s advance knowledge; and Rose’s decision to live in separate bedrooms after the birth of their last child, Edward. “There were times when I felt very torn between being a historian, taking a totally objective view, and being close, personally, with the family, and wanting their approval,” said Kearns, standing near Boston’s old City Hall.

A scene was being shot on the actual site where, in 1906, John (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald (played by Charles Durning) took the oath to be mayor, an event that, according to Kearns, marked the beginning of the Kennedy dynasty in American politics. At Durning’s side was Annette O’Toole, playing Fitzgerald daughter Rose, who ages from 16 to middle age in the drama. As director Lamont Johnson (last year’s Emmy-award winning director for “Gore Vidal’s Lincoln”) called the scene to action, O’Toole cast her eyes lovingly toward young Joseph P. Kennedy, played by William Petersen.

The miniseries, which features 130 speaking parts and 2,000 extras, concludes with John F. Kennedy’s inauguration as President in 1961.

“It’s so strange seeing my words come to life--seeing this scene come to life as it actually happened,” said Doris Goodwin, also the author of “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.” Once a member of Johnson’s White House staff, Kearns is married to Richard Goodwin, one of “the best and the brightest” of the Kennedy presidency, later a campaign aide to Robert F. Kennedy. Richard Goodwin’s memoir of the 1960s, “Remembering America,” was published recently.

As Doris Goodwin began research on John F. Kennedy’s “roots,” the Kennedy Library in Boston coincidentally came into the possession of an unsorted collection of letters and papers from Joseph Sr. and Rose Kennedy. Edward (Ted) Kennedy gave Kearns access to the material, which she found was uninspected and beginning to “erode.”

Doris Goodwin used her “social connections” to the Kennedy family to gain interviews with Rose Kennedy at the family homes in Hyannis and Palm Beach. “She was very lucid, especially about the past, and after a few contacts, she started asking me back herself,” Doris Goodwin recalled. “This is when the story started to develop its own momentum.”

Doris Goodwin, who last interviewed Rose Kennedy in 1982, said the fabled matriarch has been in frail health and reclusive since the first of a series of strokes in 1983.

ABC and Edgar Scherick, a long-time Kennedy supporter, won the bidding; Doris Goodwin said she was paid $500,000, with the guarantee of another $250,000 upon start of production. Playwright/screenwriter William Hanley (TV’s “Little Gloria,” about Gloria Vanderbilt) was commissioned to write the script simultaneously as Kearns completed chapters of her book.

“By the time the scripts were completed, in 1986, ABC had invested over $1 million in the project, but there was still no order to go ahead,” said Scherick, seated in a Cambridge hotel near his alma mater, Harvard.

By last year, Doris Goodwin’s book was published and on the major best-seller lists, but still no order was in the offing by ABC to move ahead with the TV project. “It was like throwing putty against a wall,” said Scherick. There was the shrinkage in miniseries, from the longer form such as “Roots” to the four-hour size; the changing miniseries subject matter, from history to glamour and glitz; the change in management at ABC after the merger with Capital Cities.

And: “I think the Kennedys also had fallen out of favor.”

Last May, with the writers strike threatening the fall season, Scherick brought a shortened script to ABC: “I’d like to think that they re-read it and found gold.”

When it became known that hasty plans for production, including the search for cost-efficient location sites, were underway, Gov. Dukakis placed a call to Scherick, according to the producer, urging him to shoot on locations in Massachusetts.

Director Lamont Johnson is another Kennedy aficionado and director of several segments for a 1964 NBC series, “Profiles in Courage,” based on the late President’s book. He expressed frustration at the harried pace of production and the pressures to be historically accurate. He said ABC officials maintained tight controls over portrayals and material attributed to the Kennedy family. He also grimaced over apparent contradictions: The network insisted, for instance, that Joe and Rose Kennedy never be pictured in bed together.

“Generally, I think the miniseries and my book are projecting the same sense of the Kennedys,” said Doris Goodwin. “These are people of enormous strengths and weaknesses, and even their darker side elicits a feeling of empathy.

“I think what fascinates the public so is the enduring legacy of the family. JFK alone would be remembered as a historical figure, but the family continues to endure. There was a recent period when the family legend seemed to be fading, and this paralleled the history of this miniseries: Teddy’s (1980) unsuccessful bid for the Presidency; the death of Bobby’s son, David; the publication of ‘The Kennedys,’ the Collier-Horowitz book, which took sort of a negative slant.

“But now, Teddy is an esteemed senator, and the next generation and even their kids are now coming into their own: Joe Jr. and Patrick Kennedy have been elected to public office, and Kathleen Kennedy is active in politics.

“In spite of all the ill feelings and anger that have been aimed against this family, I think Joe Sr.’s dream for his family, that it would endure, like the (John) Adams family, has come true.

“I think this is the legacy.”