NBC Breaks the Silence

Before there ever was a Clinton Admnistration policy called “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the U.S. military asked and Margarethe Cammermeyer told.

Now NBC is telling the whole story in a movie produced by Barbra Streisand and starring Glenn Close. “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” airs Monday night.

In 1989, Cammermeyer was an Army nurse with 24 years of service and a Bronze Star she earned in Vietnam. A divorcee with four sons, her life abruptly changed when she applied for the job as chief nurse of the National Guard. Cammermeyer, in response to questions asked in a top-secret security clearance check, told the truth--that she was a lesbian. Three years later, she was discharged from the Army under the 1981 Department of Defense regulation that required the discharge of any person in the military whose acts or statements indicated a “propensity” to engage in homosexual behavior. She became the highest-ranking officer ever to be booted from the military because of a sexual orientation.

In 1993, after six months of heated negotiations between the Congress and his Administration, President Bill Clinton announced the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. On June 1, 1994, a Seattle federal judge ordered the National Guard to reinstate Col. Cammermeyer, ruling her discharge based on sexual orientation was unconstitutional. Cammermeyer’s case is currently in appeal.

Streisand makes her TV movie-producing debut as executive producer of “Serving in Silence.” Close (“Sarah, Plain and Tall”), Cis Corman (president of Streisand’s Barwood Films) and Neil Meron and Craig Zadan. (“Gypsy”) are also executive producers.

“Barbra had read an article about Grethe and immediately said we have to do this film,” Corman recalls. “She felt that this was one of the most important social issues today and wanted to pursue it immediately.”

Cammermeyer, Corman says, was at first reluctant. “Barbra had said to Grethe, ‘How do you feel about seeing yourself all over the television?,”’ Corman says. “She said she didn’t think she would like that, but after spending two hours (with Streisand) she absolutely felt confident with Barbra and knew her involvement would mean this would be a film with dignity and honesty. Once we were on board together, Barbra’s choice to play Grethe was Glenn.”

Close, currently starring on Broadway in “Sunset Blvd.,” was not very familiar with Cammermeyer’s case. “I think I was aware of her, but I don’t think it was something I pouredover newspapers about.”

But once she talked with Meron and Zadan, she knew she had to be involved. “This woman is such an exemplary person,” Close explains. “She is kind of like the purest case for why no gays in the military is such a misguided and wrong policy. Her personal story is so compelling.”

The producers knew the film would reach its widest audience as a TV project. “I don’t think we ever discussed this as a feature film,” Corman says. “We wanted a network. We knew that hopefully we would have millions of viewers tuning in.”

Cammermeyer didn’t realize she was a homosexual until 1988. That’s when she met artist and teacher Diane Divelbass, played by Judy Davis in the movie. A depicted in the film, when Cammermeyer meets Divelbass, she falls unexpectedly in love with her. While she then realized she was gay, Cammermeyer didn’t publicly acknowledge it until the security-clearance. The people she believed would turn against her--her sons, her strong-willed father and her co-workers--all rallied around and supported her. It was the military that dismissed her.

Emmy Award-winning writer Alison Cross (“Roe Vs. Wade”) went to Seattle, where Cammermeyer lives and works nearby at the Veterans Administration Hospital and spent time with her, Divelbess, her children, her superiors in the military, her subordinates, her boss and her attorney.

“Grethe is such an amazing woman,” Cross says. “What I find so amazing about her is that she is eloquent without being glib. She gives you a thoughtful straight from the heart answer which she did in the original interview with the military. Not everyone would have done that. It would have been easy to sidestep the question. She didn’t because it would have been untrue at the core.”

Not only does the film ask audiences to question the military’s controversial policy on gays, Cross says, the drama also makes people confront their feelings toward them.

“Homophobia still exists in this country,” Cross says. “It took somebody as extraordinary as Grethe and as warm as Diane for you to say, ‘What makes them so different than I am scared of them?’ They are people who have the same hopes and dreams and desires and fears. You individualize a person so you make the exception, so people start to lose that built-in bias.”

With the issue of homosexuality in the military so volatile, the film already has run into opposition from at least one media watchdog group: the Family Defense Council. The organization has asked NBC to eliminate a kiss between Close and Davis near the film’s conclusion. “That is the most innocent part of the movie,” Meron says. NBC has released a statement from Rosalyn Weinman, senior vice president of broadcast standards and practices: “ ‘Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story’ is an insight and moving protrayal of one woman’s struggle to save her career and hold her family together. NBC will air the film delivered by Executive Producers Barbra Streisand and Glenn Close.”

Cammermeyer was a frequent visitor to the set last summer in Vancouver. “She was very helpful in teaching Glenn,” Zadan says.

“I think one of the most important things to capture for her story is that she is this soldier, and to do that correctly you need to be taught to walk and salute,” Close explains. “She changes when she’s in uniform.”

“One of my requests is that we would have really, really sharp military advisers there,” Close adds. “We couldn’t get anyone better than Grethe.”

Close had no trepidation playing a lesbian. “But I may say there are elements in this country that make you think twice about doing something like that. The very fact that I had to think twice made it something I thought I should do.

“I think if it ever comes to a time in this country where a group of people makes another group of people frightened to stand up for who they are and what they are, then we are in very bad times. I think we are on the brink of that. To discriminate against someone because who they are is contrary to the very principals that this country is founded on.”

“Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.