The Record from Hackensack, New Jersey • 44

B-24 THE RECORD, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 1980 BERGENPASSAICHUOSON COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY Phone Sportsline TV drama 's view of slave life is protested (lv: director Vogel that at least Ezra would have thought about it for a moment before replying. Vogel refused to go along, saic McEachin. "I wanted to at least show the dignity of the man, and that a quest for freedom was still there. "But you think those idiots would do that?" Another time, said McEachin, he refused to act in a scene calling for Ezra to allow the plantation owner to beat Ezra's young son. "I told them my conscience would not allow me to do this," said McEachin.

"It was casting aspersions on 35 million persons by showing the black man has no guts at all." McEachin said they worked out a compromise and shot the scene with Ezra taking the beating for his son. "Everyone loved it," McEachin contended. "But the next day, when I was off, they reshot the scene without me, the old way, so that the boy gets the beating." The beating is followed in the script by another scene showing slaves dancing merrily and Ezra playing his fiddle. McEachin said it was shot with Ezra playing a different instrument, but the effect was the same. where slaves were not brutalized would be accused of "stereotype racism." Gerber, executive producer of "Police Story," said the TV version of "Beulah Land" omits much of the books' sexual flavor.

"But we loved the characters. It had women, and you know that on TV today, it's good to have women." McEachin drew a heated response from Gerber, who said the actor "read the script and took the job. He never complained ahead of time. I think it's deception." McEachin said he had hoped to work out some of the script's "problems" on the job, but failed. He has now completed his part in the production.

"If this is the kind of garbage I'll be known for, then I hope I never work another day," he said. NBC is pushing "Beulah Land" for a start during the May rating sweeps period, and the present controversy may spark even greater interest in the production. "What bothers me is this show might get a good rating for the wrong reason," said Gerber. "That kind of rating, I would not like to have." "Can you imagine that, playing music and dancing right after my son is beaten? The director told us to laugh it up, but there was nothing funny. After a while, they beat you down, so I laughed." Dorian Harewood, who has a major role as Ezra's son as an adult and played Alex Haley's father, Simon Haley, in "Roots: The Next Generation," said he "pretty much" shared McEachin's view of "Beulah Land." "I assume they are pointing out one particular plantation, but even that seems to be stretching it," he said.

"The depressing part is that people will believe it's true." Clarice Taylor, who plays Ezra's wife, Lovey, said she found nothing objectionable in "Beulah Land." "Oh, there are a lot of rapes and love affairs," she said, "but how else are you going to make people watch a six-hour story, show everybody sitting in the church? And let's face it, a lot of these things happened. What are we saying, that it didn't exist?" Defending "Beulah Land" as mere a "romantic Civil War saga" with no intended "social thrust," Gerber says he's baffled why anyone depicting a plantation Open 24 hours a day National scores (201) 487-9030 Local scores (201) 487-5900 H-44 iUtord By Howard Rosenberg Los Angeles Times News Servlci An unfinished NBC drama about a 19th-century Georgia plantation is being blasted by an ad hoc coalition of organizations for offering viewers "Stepin Fetchit and Aunt Jemima clones." The protestors charge the production, "Beulah Land," with being "intensely offensive and degrading to black people." Some prominent black members of the cast also are critical of the program, a six-hour, two-part dramatization of two steamy novels, "Beulah Land" and "Look Away Beulah Land," by Lonnie Coleman. The drama was scheduled to resume production in Natchez, this week after a hiatus of 10 days because director Virgil Vogel had a heart attack and was replaced by Harry Falk. "Beulah Land" is being made by David Gerber Productions in association with Columbia Pictures Television for possible airing this spring. On Friday, Gerber labeled the protests a blend of "misguided emotions, self-serving zealotry, and honest apprehension." He charged critics of the production with "rabble-rousing" by voicing their objections to the press instead of to him, and he vowed, "I am not going to let hysteria replace history." NBC plans to air "Beulah Land" as scheduled, a network spokesman said.

Gerber contended he was "not perverting history, just showing one side." "Beulah Land" is a depiction, between 1827 and 1872, of a plantation where slaves were treated relatively humanely. Tilden Edelstein, chairman of the Rutgers University history department, is historical consultant for "Beulah Land," calling it "plausible." However, he added, "My general sense is that it the plantation in the drama is not typical. By and large, there was more discontent by slaves and inhumane treatment." The cast of "Beulah Land" includes Lesley Ann Warren, Meredith Baxter Birney, Dorian Harewood, Paul Rudd, Michael Sarrazin, Hope Lange, Eddie Al- LUmSUPEBM EXAMPLE: I 40c 80c llPrli MFR. I IKIIjS coupon savings Li TWO GUYS FOR YOUR Redeem the manufacturer money-saving coupons you clip from mailings, newspapers, magazines or mfr food coupons marsed "Two Guys food Oept When you purchase these food coupon items from Two Guys we will double the savings marked on the coupons. This offer does not apply to free coupons, or coupons from other stores.

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Miller, who also wrote "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Helter Skelter," gives no motivation for the "questionable behavior" of the slaves, the critique charges. The protestors allege that stereotyping in "Beulah Land" includes black men lusting after white females and black slave women being willingly seduced by their white masters. They also object to the script's depiction of the pregnancy of a black girl by a white boy as producing a hunchback son (Gerber maintains the son will have a limp, but no hump, although the script calls for him to have both), implying that race mixing results in disfigured offspring. Drafted by Robert Price and Saundra Sharp, the critique has been endorsed by Media Forum the League of Black Cinema Arts, Women Against Violence Against Women, Actors Speak for Life, Concerned Black Artists for Action, the Association of Asian-Pacific American Artists, and the Beverly Hills-Hollywood chapter of the NAACP. "We want to keep this off the air," said Al Fann, vice-president of Concerned Black Artists for Action.

"Roots" should have closed the book on slave drama, he believes. "We said it already. We need to get on with living." Sharp, an actress-writer, said the coalition hoped to buy ads criticizing "Beulah Land" and would lobby NBC affiliate stations against airing the program. McEachin, probably best, known as star of the short-lived NBC series, "Tenafiy," has a prominent role as a privileged house slave named Ezra in "Beulah Land." "I had an absolutely horrendous experience in trying to deal with people on the show who had absolutely no understanding of how horrifying this is to blacks," he said. "Why do all of us blacks in the show have to be singing and dancing?" McEachin said he was enraged about two scenes in particular.

In one, Ezra and his wife, Lovey, reject an opportunity to go free. Ezra says: "Freedom? Do that mean we gots to leave Beulah Land?" McEachin said he understood why an elderly slave like Ezra wouldn't want to leave a place that had been his home for so long, but that he argued with Unbeatable One-Stop Shopping at Two Guys Fresh Frozen Farm Fresh Dairy Specials Fresh Fruits Vegetables New York Style Deli Snacks (3 Food Bargains 3a BALATON IMPORTED BABY STYLE SAVE 410 LIGHT N' LIVELY FLORIDA SIZE 125 Juice Swiss 4 19 Cheese a 1 1 FLAVORS RICH'S 3 STAR OVEN ROASTED 8-OZ. Pascal Celery 49 FOR Turkey Roll lb 1 99 FRESH CRISP RUSSER HAM-CHEESE PEPPER Polish 89 Cabbage 19 SAVE 16C FLEISCHMANN'S Soft ZN B0( Margarine 99' CAVP KRAFT NATURAL Swiss Cheese Slices 8 l19 SAVE 36C CHEESE OR MEAT Buitoni Raviolis it 89 avt ifif rmi unurnvi Two Guys Delicious Bakery Goods ill in j1 l.MtJ.Tjlii).J1,..1, the childbirth center; p.a. 2015670522 an alternative TWO GUYS Waffles 69c LIBERTY BELLE ALL FLAVORS Raisin (Q)((y Bread Jc iA 4 09 IMITATION 6-OZ. CAN Orange Juice4f1 to hospital delivery HACKENSACIC HACKENSACK AVE.

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