A Close Concept : Glenn Close’s interpretation of prairie tale leads to ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’

Three years ago, Glenn Close was asked by Caedmon Tapes to read aloud the text of the children’s book “Sarah, Plain and Tall” to record on cassette. The 58-page book, which in 1986 won author Patricia MacLachlan the prestigious Newbery Medal for outstanding children’s literature, spins a tale of a lonely woman cocooned safely in Maine in the early 1900s. She answers an ad for a mail-order bride to care for two children on the wild plains of Kansas.

Close, a Connecticut Yankee whose old-family, old-money father is a descendant of the founders of Greenwich, Conn., felt inextricably drawn to the words she read. “It’s very, very beautifully written. It’s a classic already, and it deserves to be,” the actress said.

At Close’s invitation, MacLachlan left her home in Massachusetts to visit the actress at a studio in New York and listen to her interpretation.

“I put on earphones, and at the end of the first chapter I burst into tears, which were absolutely involuntary,” MacLachlan said after filming had wrapped. “Glenn breathed such life into my characters, they became real.”

MacLachlan had received offers from film companies to buy the rights to her book but had turned them all down. “Somehow I knew that the right person with the right sensibilities would come along,” the author said.

As it turned out, Close was just getting her own production company under way. “Patty told me she would love it if I made the film,” Close said. “I said ‘Yes,’ because I thought this would be a great beginning.”

The result, “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” produced by and starring Close and co-written by MacLachlan, airs Sunday night on CBS under the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” banner. Filmed in what’s left of the open plains in Kansas and Nebraska, the movie also stars Christopher Walken as Jacob, the grieving, stoic widower who advertises for a wife and mother for his young children.

For Close, 43, “Sarah, Plain and Tall” represents the middle section of an important trilogy of movies that were filmed back-to-back-to-back.

In the first, “Hamlet,” now in theaters, Close portrays Queen Gertrude, the mother of Shakespeare’s immortal Dane, played this time around by Mel Gibson. In the unreleased romantic-comedy “Meeting Venus,” the actress plays a Swedish diva who is a member of an opera company in Paris.

“I’ve never done that before, shot three films in a row, and I would never do that again,” Close said. “But the roles were all so challenging and brilliantly written. I’m attracted right now to romantic roles.”

Requited romance might be the only part of the female experience that Close hasn’t lived on the screen. In 1982, after a glowing Broadway career, she made her feature film debut at 35 as Robin Williams’ mother in “The World According to Garp.” A series of roles Close describes as “earth mothers” followed in “The Big Chill,” the little-seen “The Stone Boy” and “The Natural.”

She stormed uncomfortably deep into public consciousness in 1988 as the psychotic femme fatale in “Fatal Attraction.” Close explained why she chose the unusual role: “Movies portraying violence or aberration can ultimately be positive. In a funny way, ‘Fatal Attraction’ probably had more influence on getting people into psychiatrists’ offices than anything else. It got a lot out in the open that had been seething underneath relationships.”

Close received five Academy Award nominations in six years (she’s a long shot to receive a sixth nomination for last year’s acclaimed “Reversal of Fortune,” co-starring Jeremy Irons as Claus Von Bulow). By the time “Dangerous Liaisons” was released in 1989, Close was regarded by the industry with the same reverence as Meryl Streep, although Close has yet to win an Oscar.

“Glenn is one of the top three actresses in Hollywood,” said “Sarah, Plain and Tall” executive producer William Self, a former president of CBS Theatrical Films. “And I think she’s the only one of them willing to do television, mixed in with her movie career.”

In the rustic outdoors of Grand Island, the setting of a faded pioneer town at the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer, “Sarah, Plain and Tall” was in its final day of shooting. Close was dressed authentically in a tailored, cream-colored jacket and skirt with a straw hat tied to her head by a fine yellow net.

Preferring the crowded outdoor environment to the privacy of her dressing trailer, Close sat down for an interview over lunch at a picnic table surrounded by cast and crew. In doing so, she seemed to shrug off her stardom like a heavy shawl on a warm day.

“When I was young and I thought of being an actor, I just thought of the acting. I still do. It’s hard for me to conceive, you know, that people might perceive me as a big movie star ,” she said through stifled laughter. “I was working with Michael Douglas (on ‘Fatal Attraction’) and he was saying, ‘Enjoy it. Enjoy the attention. Go with it.’ But I don’t see it.”

Close paused for a moment in thought. She reached down to give table scraps to a once-stray dog, Sugar, whom she had adopted and named a week earlier when the animal was haunting the set in Kansas.

“I’ve learned a lot,” she said. “I’m proud. I’ve worked very, very hard, and I never had any shortcuts. I came to New York with no ins, not knowing anybody. So I’m very proud of what I’ve been able to achieve.”

When asked about her willingness to do TV, Close said, “I just wish we had a different way of thinking in this country. I wish that we had the English sensibility, which is all the actors do everything. I think it would up the quality of what is on television. Instead of saying, ‘I don’t want to be on television,’ I think actors should say, ‘Let’s develop something that would make me proud to be on television.”’

What makes Close proud of her CBS movie is the character of Sarah, and the sacrifice she makes for Jacob’s two children, played by Lexi Randall and Christopher Bell. “Sarah is very independent,” Close said. “I think she epitomizes the pioneer spirit in this country, and the women who kind of held everything together.

“Back in 1910, women had very few options. You could either be a spinster and stay at home, or you were going to get married. I think it took a lot of guts to say, ‘No, I don’t want to have this life. I want to try something different.’ I don’t think I would have been strong enough to do what Sarah did had I been alive then.”

Close, twice married and divorced, has a 3-year-old daughter, Annie Maude, with producer John Starke, with whom she currently lives in Westchester County, N.Y. “Having a child has made me so much more aware of children. I mean, very simplistically put, I was pretty indifferent, if not slightly intimidated, by children.

“Now I’ve become a great champion of children. They’re a wonderful species. Having a daughter, I think very hard and am very careful of the kind of characters I choose to portray now. Children must be treasured and nurtured and taken care of. If we just decided to do that, our entire value system would shift and a lot of things in this country would improve.”

At that moment, an extra in the movie, a little boy in dirty trousers, walked up and asked Close for her photo. She laughed in amusement and patiently posed for a picture.

“Sarah, Plain and Tall” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS.