Actresses Take the Spotlight During the May Sweeps

The May sweeps--April 24 to May 22--will see a host of TV movies featuring lead actresses who are at the edge of 40--and beyond.

CBS has two: JoBeth Williams is featured in “Victim of Love” May 5, about a woman in the middle of a dangerous love triangle. Ellen Burstyn, in “Running Out,” May 12 plays an aging woman whose increasing loss of memory and other faculties prevent her from properly caring for her 9-year-old grandson.

NBC also has two: Jill Clayburgh will be featured in “Life Lines” May 20, based on Jill Ireland’s autobiography. The movie will portray the actress’ troubled last years when, in the midst of her struggle against cancer, she discovered her adopted teen-age son was a drug addict. And Bonnie Bedelia stars in “Switched at Birth” April 28 and 29--a four-hour miniseries based on the true story of two Florida girls mistakenly swapped in a hospital nursery and raised for a decade by the wrong biological parents.

ABC is featuring “Our Sons,” May 19 with Julie Andrews and Ann-Margret, about two mothers confronted by their sons’ homosexuality and AIDS.

There’s more to come next season. Jessica Lange, who is 41, would do her first movie for television, a Hallmark Hall of Fame adaptation of Willa Cather’s classic novel of Swedish immigrants on the Nebraska prairie, “O Pioneers!,” for CBS.Also, Tyne Daly is a homeless woman and Gena Rowlands a woman who lives in an elegant nearby apartment house in “My Shadow.”

Among other projects on NBC involving older women characters, Academy Award-winning actress Jessica Tandy (“Driving Miss Daisy”) has the title role in NBC’s “The Story Lady,” an original piece about a woman who starts reading stories to children and ends up on a public television station. And Dolly Parton (“Steel Magnolias,” “Nine to Five”) will make her dramatic-television debut in “Smart Women, Foolish Choices” about a country-Western singer who becomes the prime suspect in her abusive lover’s murder.

NBC is also looking for an actress for the adaptation of Allan Gurganus’ best-selling novel, “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All.” “Lucy Marston is a wonderful role to play, from 14 to 99,” says Ruth Slawson, NBC’s senior vice president, miniseries and motion pictures for television.

There will also be a six-hour miniseries based on C. David Heymann’s controversial biography about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, “A Woman Named Jackie.”

On ABC next season, Ann Bancroft will star in an adaptation of Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound.”

And there is the still untitled Doris Day project. “(The character) is a woman with a love of animals and a background as the star of TV who reluctantly and innocently falls into crimes,” says Allen Sabinson, ABC’s executive vice president, motion pictures for television and miniseries.