Dancing Debbie Allen Embraces Directing for ‘Pollyanna’ Remake

With her halter top and baseball cap, sing-song voice and thigh-slapping laugh, Debbie Allen’s behind-the-camera style isn’t likely to remind anyone of John Huston or Cecil B. DeMille. As she wipes the sweat from her bare shoulders and jokes with the cameraman about her girlish figure, sings out commands punctuated with “honey,” and hugs visitors to the set with unrestrained delight, she looks more like a cute, rambunctious water girl than she does a serious director.

But make no mistake, this lovable jester is a woman in charge, a woman with more on her mind than fun and games.

Allen--Broadway dancer, star of “Fame” and producer of the post-Lisa Bonet-version of “A Different World”--is directing her first film, a made-for-TV “Magical World of Disney” two-hour musical called “Polly,” which is based on the 1960 film “Pollyanna” and is scheduled to air in November on NBC. And in spite of the burning Burbank heat and smog and her conspicuous affability, Allen has her cast and crew scurrying around like a pit crew at the Indy 500.

Child dancers do take after take as she choreographs their fancy footwork. Butterfly McQueen of “Gone With the Wind” fame lifts herself out of the shade to scamper up and down the steep steps of an old church. And Allen’s older sister, Phylicia Rashad, the star of “Polly,” sits up and marvels.

“She’s good,” Rashad said, her dark eyes opening wide with pride. “This whole set is just infused with enthusiasm and fun. Debbie knows how to use people, to use all of their qualities and put them in situations where they can be viewed in a new light. And I think she’s perfect for this project because with her experience on the stage and her experience on ‘Fame’--she knows how to choreograph not only her dancers, but she choreographs the camera too.

“I think the fact that she was a dancer first helps her. There’s always all kinds of motion in the foreground, motion in the background. She designs all that so carefully. I wanted to work with her because I knew that with Debbie directing, this film would be innovative. That’s my word for her-- innovative .”

Allen feigns anger when Rashad tells her that someone on the set wanted to know which of the two sisters is the older, but her feistiness turns to a blush when she hears Rashad is saying such nice things about her. Though they both worked on Allen’s song-and-dance special last year for ABC, “Polly” is their first chance to work together in a movie.

“It’s good directing Phylicia because she trusts me,” said Allen, lounging on a shaded lawn as the crew set up for a new scene. “I remember when she first observed me directing on an episode of ‘The Bronx Zoo,’ she just sort of perked up. She just couldn’t believe that her little sister, and I think I was five months’ pregnant at the time, was out there running the set.”

The director of numerous television episodes of “Fame” and many of last season’s “A Different World,” Allen said she rehearsed Rashad unmercifully for her special last year because her sister kept refusing to loosen up like Allen knew she could.

But on “Polly,” the story of a free-spirited orphan who comes to live with her stodgy, tyrannical Aunt Polly (Rashad) and in the process transforms an unfeeling town with her liveliness and her music, Allen said she is no harder on Rashad than on anyone else.

“She trusts that if I bring something to her attention, she knows I’m trying to make it better,” Allen said. “And I always look at her very carefully and I always make her look pretty. I can’t help but make her look pretty.”

William Blinn, the executive producer and screenwriter of “Polly” and the man who decided to update Eleanor H. Porter’s original story and David Swift’s 1960 movie by setting it in Alabama in 1955 with an all-black cast, has no doubts that Allen’s directorial movie debut, will turn out to be as “pretty” and “innovative” as the sisters themselves.

To be sure, musicals are not a regular part of television fare. HBO aired one, “Glory, Glory,” earlier this year; Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” played in 1985; there was a musical “Alice in Wonderland” a few years back and a black “Cinderella” set in Harlem back in 1978. Rashad mentions “Bye Bye Birdie” as the last filmed musical she can remember. Others on the set recall “Stormy Weather” from 1943 with Lena Horne, Cab Calloway and Fats Waller.

Blinn, who gave Allen her first directorial assignment when he was the executive producer of “Fame,” says he chose a musical “Pollyanna” just because it’s different. He said the 100-minute film, which also stars “The Cosby Show’s” Keshia Knight Pulliam as the mischievous orphan, will ultimately contain about 15 minutes of song and dance.

“We’ve all seen enough car chases to make us sick and the TV movies all tend to come out of ’60 Minutes,’ the latest issue of the week,” Blinn said. “I think this will be a gratifying change of pace. It’s entertaining. It has some currency to it. It’s not mindless. And there is a whole generation of kids out there who have never seen a musical. To them a musical is MTV.”

Rashad, who appeared on Broadway in “The Wiz” and “Dream Girls” before becoming Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” relishes the chance to sing and dance again, even if it also means learning that she can be a “hoity-toity, old stick” of a woman at the same time.

“But more than that, I think this is historic,” Rashad said. “We’re reviving the musical for television, and it’s good to be a part of that. And this is also the kind of film I grew up watching. These costumes and old houses bring back an era that had its own controversies and contradictions, but it also had a sweetness to it that the viewing public deserves to see. We see so much violence, so much hatred and anger--how nice to see some sweetness, how nice to see some love. How nice to hear some music and see these kids dance. How nice to share that with the viewing public. It’s a good feeling as a performing artist.”

Allen says that it was the musicals she watched as a child that prompted her to take up dancing in the first place, and she is baffled by the fact that Hollywood doesn’t make more of them today. She points out that though “Fame” was canceled by NBC after only one season, it continued in first-run syndication for four more years.

“They tried to kill it, and they couldn’t,” Allen said. “I think it’s just that more and more business people are making the creative decisions as opposed to people who really understand good theater. All they care about is Wall Street and money. I’m dealing all the time with executives who say, ‘OK, what’s the budget?’ and you say, ‘And here’s a copy of the music,’ and it’s, ‘Who cares about the music?’ That mentality exists and I think we’re all paying for it in the kind of programs we get.”

Allen plans to return this summer for another year directing and producing “A Different World,” where life at an all-black college recalls her own days at Howard University where “half my life was the cabaret.” And even though it is possible to count the women directors actually working in feature films on the fingers of two hands, Allen expects “Polly” to open some doors. The only problem is figuring out just what kind of feature she would like to do first.