Profile : A Mother’s Pain : Michele Lee is Torn Between Two Sons in CBS’ Emotional Movie

Family violence, such as spousal abuse and elder abuse, often has been depicted on television in recent years. Yet the most common form of family violence is also the one most overlooked: adolescent sibling abuse, which typically occurs in three out of five American households every year and is so serious that it would be considered assault and battery if committed against a stranger.

CBS is bringing the issue to the screen tonight with the TV movie “My Son Johnny,” based on the true story of a 17-year-old boy who fatally shot his abusive 21-year-old brother. Michele Lee stars as their mother, a Baltimore widow named Marianne Cortino, who, living in denial about her bullying elder son Johnny (Rick Schroder), is torn between upholding his memory and defending her younger offspring, Anthony (Corin Nemec). Rip Torn also stars as Marianne’s nemesis, the attorney who takes on Anthony’s case.

Executive producer Carla Singer, whose other recent telefilms include “Murder in New Hampshire” and “I Still Dream of Jeannie,” spent four years developing the project, which was written by Peter Nelson and directed in Vancouver by Peter Levin.

“I was possessed, because this is an important subject,” she says. “I am a sibling, and in my family there was always competition. I was the bully against my younger brother. The people I’ve talked to about this movie identify with it. One executive said, ‘I don’t think my brother was all he could be because I bullied him.’ It touched a chord.”

Michele Lee couldn’t relate personally: She got along well with her younger brother and has only one child (22-year-old David), but says she was so moved by the powerful script that she gave up her hiatus from “Knots Landing” to do the film. “The characters were so three-dimensional, the story so frightening--I was so astounded at what can happen and did happen,” she says. “It’s that concept of ‘boys will be boys,’ that even if one sibling is beating up the other, he’ll grow out of it. That’s handed down from family to family, that they’ll grow out of it, the weak will get stronger.”

The role of Marianne was a stretch from Lee’s 12 - year “Knots” role as the dynamic, sophisticated Karen Fairgate MacKenzie. “They have nothing in common, other than having children. (Marianne is) uneducated, working class, blue-collar. She doesn’t walk erect, with her head held high, or enter a room with any sense of self, because her self is meshed with her dead husband. I changed my look, and the way I walk and talk--there’s a sense of street in her talk. I spent an enormous amount of time with the script before doing the movie, because she spoke in a manner so different from mine that it made my memory work difficult.

“It was a wonderful experience to do this movie from a creative standpoint,” Lee adds, “but it was also a very stressful period, especially as a mother--dealing with that kind of love and denial, having to live with the consequences of not stepping in. I’ve had denial--someone tells you something about your kid that’s a negative thing, and you somehow make peace with it and make it go away.”

Though the film’s events are far removed from anything Lee has experienced, there was one example of art imitating life: Actor Rick Schroder has been a friend of her son’s since the boys were 4. “He played with David. In my dressing room, I formed a little collage of pictures of them, so in essence that was symbolic of my two sons (in the movie). The relationship really helped in terms of the identification of a family unit on the set--I was instantly ‘the mother’ to Rick, and there was a lot of trust there and a certain type of transference of the deep love for my own son to him, because I knew he had shared some moments of my son’s life while he was growing up.”

For Corin Nemec, star of the Fox comedy “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose,” playing the victimized brother who literally takes matters into his own hands was not only an acting challenge but a welcome opportunity to remind people that he could do the kind of heavy drama which earned him an Emmy nomination for the 1989 miniseries “I Know My First Name Is Steven.”

Nemec, who just turned 20, has an older sister with whom, he says, he had occasional minor fights as a youngster. Like Lee, he was attracted by the compelling script. “We did a couple of scenes at the end of the night that were real emotional,” he recalls. “The emotions didn’t leave when they said, ‘Cut.’ I was in the van going back to the hotel, and I was still feeling upset. That’s never happened to me before.”

At the film’s conclusion, CBS will air the phone number of the Childhelp IOF Foresters National Child Abuse Hotline, for further information about this type of domestic violence. Whether viewers call or not, Michele Lee hopes that they will benefit from the film’s intended message.

“We as a society have to learn,” she says, “that we have to teach our young, who have accepted violence as a way of life, not to raise their hand or hurt the well-being of anyone--whoever they are.”

“My Son Johnny” airs tonight at 9 on CBS.