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Finally an adult

"Homefront" actress Tammy Lauren says she got her makeup inspiration from the films of Lon Chaney.

"After I was out of work for about six months, I studied Lon Chaney movies. He's my idol. I went out and got a makeup kit and learned how to change my look. "

She credits the new look with helping her land a part in the ABC series. It's one of the first adult roles the 23-year-old actress has played in her 16-year career.

"I'd had my first kiss on screen about 189 times," she says.

The producers of ''Homefront'' are happy with their fan appeal, and why not? It can't hurt to have Dear Abby campaigning for you. Abigail van Buren urged readers a while back to check the series out, and her column in Monday's Post-Dispatch recorded their enthusiastic responses. ''Homefront'' not only has several appealing story lines going - the romance between Catholic widow Anne and Jewish labor organizer Al, for one, and young Jeff's baseball career for another - but its production values (lighting, music, costumes) are faultless. And the show has been surprisingly easy to find - it moved only once, from 9 p.m. Tuesdays to 9 p.m. Wednesdays. ''I think we beat the odds,'' says creator Lynn Marie Latham. ''Ad Age magazine picked us as the first series to be canceled this season, and we've received an order for two more episodes, making it 24 total.'' There's no word yet from ABC on next year

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Communist episode recalls real life

By: MARILYN BECK; STACY JENEL SMITH Tribune Media Services
Date: 04/04/93

"Homefront" actress Wendy Phillips revisited her past, in a sense, with production of the series episode that is shown Tuesday (9 p.m. on Channel 9). The story has Wendy's on-screen spouse, John Slattery, accused of being a Communist - something that really happened to her father, Tony Award-winning actor Wendell Phillips, during the early 1950s Hollywood witch hunts.
"Once he was blacklisted there was nothing for him. His career never recovered," recalls Wendy, who was born in 1952. She was sent to live with her grandmother because her parents didn't have the money to support her. "He had been a member of the Communist Party in the '40s, for about four weeks," she says.
Phillips' father, who died last September, eventually found happiness as a teacher. "I felt very close to him while we were shooting this. For the first time I had the point of view of his contemporaries," Wendy said.

Homefront" executive producer creator David Jacobs reports that ABC didn't bother to inform him that his show was going off the air before making the news public. He's just hopeful that the fact the network didn't order a shutdown of production means that "Homefront" will return in the spring, as ABC is saying it will. Jacobs notes that by the time the show wraps production this month, there will be nine segments in the can, and adds: "Maybe I'm a Pollyanna, but I'm seeing this move by ABC as an opportunity to save my show. "

Highlights..Return

Judy (Kelly Rutherford) considers having an affair with married Mike Sloan (Ken Jenkins) as "Homefront" returns with seven new episodes, replacing "Civil Wars," which is on hiatus. (Both dramas remain in danger of cancellation.) Also tonight: Anne (Wendy Phillips), who remains in a wheelchair while recovering from polio, is frustrated by attempts to help her.

Highlights

"Homefront" ends its season with a double episode that has Ginger (Tammy Lauren) considering changing fiances just days before her wedding; Charlie (Harry O'Reilly) trying to convert to Judaism so he can marry Gina (Giuliana Santini); and the bickering Sloans (Ken Jenkins and Mimi Kennedy) reconsidering their divorce plans. The episode title, "All Good Things," implies an ending, and the sad fact is "Homefront" is unlikely to return next year.

Look for one fewer Metcalf on ''Homefront'' next season. Hank Metcalf (David Newsom), big brother to Jeff (Kyle Chandler), has been written out. Hank, whose absence will be explained on the first episode, went bonkers when his wife was killed last season.

Taking his place as a regular will be sexy barmaid Judy Owen (Kelly Rutherford), who appeared on several episodes last season. That brings the cast to 15.

In a ''Homefront'' plot twist, aspiring starlet Ginger (Tammy Lauren) and Jeff, her fiance and an outfielder for the Cleveland Indians, will try to break into the fledgling TV business as a Burns-and-Allen type comedy team. (As bickering lovebirds, they get the show's funniest lines.)

`Homefront' star had football hopes

By: Date: 02/23/92

Q. I think Harry O'Reilly is great on "Homefront. " Can you tell me about his background? - L.J.
A. At one time Harry O'Reilly was set on tackling a different kind of fame.
He played safety for two years for his hometown semipro football team, the Brooklyn Mariners, and had dreams of one day making it to the NFL. But when that didn't work out, he turned to acting.
He trained professionally with Geraldine Page and quickly found work. He was a guest star on the television series "The Equalizer," "Law and Order" and "H.E.L.P." He also appeared in the cable comedy special "Going Back to Brooklyn" and was a regular on the cable series "The Ben Stiller Show. "
O'Reilly had a role in the movie "Hamburger Hill" and made a cameo appearance in the recent film "Billy Bathgate. " He also had parts in "Heart" and "Vampire's Kiss. "

In Thursday night's episode (8 o'clock, Channel 2), ABC's struggling "Homefront" series, set just after World War II in a small town near Cleveland, makes an attempt to recreate the fear and panic that swept communities during the polio epidemics of the 30s and 40s.

The network has made no secret that one of its principal characters - Anne Kahn, played by Wendy Phillips - is struck down by the disease, although the extent of its impact on her has yet to be revealed.

As usual, Thursday's episode includes several running plot lines, and viewers who aren't familiar with the characters and on-going stories may find themselves a little disoriented. That does not apply, however, to the polio story, which plays out with considerable power.

It's worth a look.

If you came in late to ABC's ''Homefront,'' which built viewers as the year went on, you can pick up the pieces in a series of ''encores'' beginning Tuesday, July 21, with the 90-minute pilot. And on July 28, the episode ''Take My Hand'' will air for the first time. It follows the events just after the wartime death of the Sloans' son, Mike.

Four programs worth saving

Susan Stewart and Mike Duffy
Knight-Ridder News Service

14-Apr-1993 Wednesday

"HOMEFRONT" -- 10 p.m. Tuesdays, KGTV, Channel 10: Life in a small Ohio company town in the postwar '40s. Sex, polio, great hairdos, fine overacting, sex, labor problems, McCarthyism, adultery, sex, death, birth, sex, many wardrobe changes, Hattie Winston singing gospel songs, sex . . . Need we say more? "Homefront" does melodrama well, and gentle humor even better. It's a high-principled soap opera. As such, it manages lines like this: "I've read `Das Kapital'! Have you?" That from a handsome, ruthless newspaper editor to his strong-willed-yet-innocent seductee.

Chances of survival: Fair to good.

`HOMEFRONT' TEAM CREATES NEW DRAMA

By Gail Pennington Of the Post-Dispatch Staff

THE CREATORS of "Homefront" have a six-episode order for a drama that could debut on CBS as early as October. Tentatively called "Second Chances," it will center on three women who experience radical changes in their lives.

CBS bought the show on the strength of a two-hour script written by Lynn Marie Latham and Bernard Lechowick, the husband-and-wife team that turned out "Homefront" and previously was part of the "Knots Landing" creative staff.

"They said, `We know what you do, we love what you do, do it again for us,' " Latham said. (OK, fine, but why didn't CBS just pick up "Homefront" then?)

ABC's ''Homefront'' is a rare network show that deals with working people and unions in a serious manner. Writing in the AFL-CIO News, Candice Johnson says the show treats workers of the late 1940s ''with dignity and respect.'' The show airs 8 p.m. Thursdays.

Janice Gretemeyer, ABC's vice president for public relations, said Thursday from New York that the producers ''tried to convey the activities and the mood of that time period, and obviously it was a very strong, emerging time for the unions, with the return of so many GIs from the war.''

The audience, surprisingly, is a young one, with the core group between 18 and 49 and with a majority of women, Gretemeyer said. She said the decision to renew it for a second season ''was based on the fact that it had a loyal core audience and got a great deal of critical acclaim.''

WRITERS GUILD AWARDS

The Writers Guild of America East and West made it
official at awards banquets last night on both coasts. Among the awardees: Lynn Latham and Bernard Lechowick for ABC's "Homefront" pilot; Henry Bromell ("I'll Fly Away"); Diane English ("Murphy Brown"); Rory O'Connor ("Frontline: The Bank of Crooks and Criminals") and David Grubin ("The American Experience: LBJ").

Ben Kubasik, TV SPOTS. , Newsday, 03-23-1993

MAIL: FALL PREVIEW
People 09-23-1991

   Homefront is such a wonderful television show that I wish I had created it, as you say, but I didn't. Lynn Latham and Bernard Lechowick created Homefront. My role, as their co-executive producer, was at best that of a grandparent, reminding them how it used to be done in my time. Because I created Dallas and Knots Landing, I used to be credited now and then with creating other shows of the genre, most of which I hated. That was embarrassing. But now I find that to be credited with the creation of a show that I love is even more
embarrassing.
   DAVID JACOBS, Burbank, Calif.
   We apologize for the error. -- ED.

CLOSE-UP ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR FOR THE BAD GIRL ON ABC'S 'HOMEFRONT'
Entertainment Weekly 03-13-1992

   What makes Sammi Davis-Voss run? Her impulsiveness, in part. And what put the 27-year-old British actress on the starting line was her calligraphy. Arriving in London eight years ago, she fired off exquisitely penned letters to casting agents and landed a TV part, then roles in Mona Lisa and Hope and Glory. Now she's making her mark as the calculating British war bride in ABC's Homefront.
   Davis-Voss quit her small-town Catholic girls' school at 15 and moved on her own to Birmingham, where she happened into acting. "As a kid I just watched things," she says. "Nothing really got in. But acting fit like a glove." Make that a small glove: Suffering from anorexia, Davis-Voss had dropped as low as 65 pounds. "But when I started acting, it mended me. I started eating."
   She now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer-director Kurt Voss, 28, whom she met on 1991's Horseplayer. "Last year we went to Las Vegas and got married," she reports. "I rang my parents, and they nearly fainted."

Q&A
The_Record (Bergen County, NJ)
02-07-1993

Q: What happened to "Homefront"? It hasn't been on in a while.

A: Despite the write-in response from viewers that largely helped
the ABC series secure a second season, its ratings really didn't go up much, so the network decided to take it off the air - frankly, so that it could win the November "sweeps" period without its overall Nielsen numbers being brought down. However, Ted Harbert, who recently inherited the top programming slot when Robert Iger was promoted to president of ABC, promises that "Homefront" will be back by the end of the season, with subplots including a polio-related crisis for Anne Metcalf Kahn (played by Wendy Phillips).

THE 1992 FALL TV PREVIEW
Entertainment Weekly

HOMEFRONT (ABC, 9-10 p.m.) When new episodes begin on Sept. 17, the '40s soap will be feeling the pinch of the '90s recession; in an effort to downsize the show's large cast, Homefront is dropping actors David Newsom (the recently widowed Hank Metcalf) and Sterling Macer Jr. (GI Robert Davis). This season will emphasize comedy-look for lots of Jeff and Ginger-and romance, especially in a tense triangle composed of good-guy Charlie, sugar-sweet Gina, and conniving Caroline.

NEW ON `HOMEFRONT'
The_Record (Bergen County, NJ)
Date: 10-15-1991,

John Slattery, a regular on CBS' short-lived "Under Cover," is
joining ABC's "Homefront." He debuts tonight.

Slattery will play Al Kahn, a Jewish organizer who tries to unionize the town factory. When romantic sparks fly with Linda Metcalf (Jessica Steen), the much-younger factory file clerk, her mother (Wendy Phillips), a devout Catholic, becomes incensed.

Television features: COOL TV LIST
Entertainment Weekly
06-26-1992

COOL CODA
The final joke in ABC's Roseanne during each week's closing
credits-a gift- wrapped postscript to viewers who stick around.

COOL ALL-PURPOSE COMMERCIAL PUNCH LINE
"Jean-Luc!"

COOL REPORTER NAME
Star Jones of NBC News.

COOL OPENING CREDITS
The retro-deco typeface and theme song ("Ac-cen-tchu-ate the
Positive") on ABC's Homefront.

COOL FURNITURE
The comfy, oversize rec-room chairs on NBC's Later With Bob Costas.

COOL ORDINARY GUY
Al Roker of NBC's Sunday Today.

HOMEFRONT
People
Picks & Pans: Tube- David Hiltbrand
10-28-1991

ABC (Tuesdays, 10 P.M. ET)

Here's the show that replaced thirtysomething: an uninvolving
melodrama with a large undifferentiated cast, set in a factory townin 1945 as our soldiers return home from overseas.
Amid the standard romantic and familial entanglements, the series seeks to sow the seeds of feminism and civil rights. Soon Homefront will have run through all its returning-from-the-war story lines, leaving only a tepid soap opera set in the '40s. What that gives ABC on Tuesdays is a big speed bump on the road to Nightline. Grade: C

Backstage Chatter
By Christy Slewinski
19th July
TELEVISION EDITOR
Greenburg-Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW

If you didn't discover ABC's drama gem ``Homefront'' during the regular television season, you now have a chance to redeem yourself. This Tuesday, ABC will rebroadcast the 90-minute pilot, and next week, they'll air a never-before seen episode titled ``Take My Hand,'' which deals with the funeral of Mike Sloan Jr., who sent his expectant Italian war bride to live with his parents, then was killed overseas. The post-World War II soap follows the residents of a small Ohio town as they deal with the changes brought about by the war. ABC plans to air several more key episodes in the next few weeks. ``Homefront'' has received a preliminary endorsement from the advocacy group Viewers for Quality Television.

NEW ON TV
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg; Sep 24, 1991;

Homefront (9:30-11 p.m., ABC, Chs. 10 and 40) ABC offers thirtysomething addicts a period drama instead. In a 90-minute premiere (regular time is 10 p.m.), Homefront introduces viewers to its huge ensemble cast and lets you get comfy with the year 1945, as WWII soldiers return home to a small Ohio town. There's plenty of steam as tangled personal stories are set against a backdrop of social changes. - JANIS D. FROELICH

Some TV worth staying home for:
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg; Dec 27, 1991;
Janis D. Froelich;

For the first time in a long time, television has a string of shows that I find myself watching week after week.

TV has become, shall I say, a habit? And if you think I'm surprised by this, how about the networks? Going into this fall season, the predictions were for a washout agenda of new shows. But surprisingly, few new series have been canned, and some of the returning ones are doing better than ever.

Here's a list of 10 best shows that I put together with relative ease because there are about double this number that I enjoy:
....
5. Homefront (ABC Tuesdays 10 p.m.): It's been a comfort to have a serial to come home to, especially this one set in post-World War II. Even if the story line gets a little hokey, there are all those wonderful clothes and period items to see. I'm hooked on Jeff and Ginger, who have the most amusing relationship without the usual heavy-handed sexual overtones found in most soaps.

TELEVISION Q&A's
St. Petersburg Times; May 30, 2000;

Question: I remember the short-lived TV series Homefront. I think Jennifer Lopez co-starred in that show with Kyle Chandler of Early Edition. Does my memory serve me right?

Answer: Not quite. Kyle Chandler did star in the 1991 World War II- era drama as Cleveland Indians rookie Jeff Metcalf. Tammy Lauren played his fiancee, Ginger. The other female members of the ensemble cast included Sammi Davis, Mimi Kennedy, Wendy Phillips and Jessica Steen. Lopez, now a chart-topping recording artist and actor, did start out on television, though. She was one of the Fly Girls who danced on the sketch comedy show In Living Color.