North and South (miniseries)

• 1. Introduction

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  North and South opens with a chance encounter at a train station. There, a young South Carolinian named Orry Main first meets Madeline Fabray and falls for her before he ever reaches West Point. The trilogy of ABC miniseries, adapted from John Jakes' novels of the same name, follows Orry's enduring friendship with a Pennsylvanian named George Hazard. Their families end up on opposite sides of the Civil War, mirroring divisions the story is built around. Not every chapter of that story landed the same way with viewers. The people who made it lived out dramas of their own once the cameras stopped rolling.

• 2. Two Families, One War

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  As a young man, Orry Main, second born son of a wealthy South Carolina plantation owner, decides to attend West Point. In New York City, on his way there, he meets George Hazard, the second son of a Pennsylvania ironworks family. The two quickly become close friends. At the academy, their classmates include George Pickett, George McClellan, and Thomas Jackson, later called Stonewall Jackson, along with a senior student named Ulysses Grant. A fellow cadet from Georgia, Elkanah Bent, becomes their tormentor as drillmaster. Behind a charming, easy manner, Bent hides a cruel and deceitful nature. He is also the illegitimate son of a US senator. The Main family are rural planters who hold slaves outside Charleston, South Carolina. The Hazards, by contrast, live in a small Pennsylvania mill town and profit from iron manufacturing and industrial capital. By the time Orry and George left West Point, they had trained beside men who would go on to command opposing armies within two decades.

• 3. The Actors at the Center

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  Patrick Swayze played Orry Main in the original 1985 miniseries, opposite James Read as George Hazard. Lesley-Anne Down took the role of Madeline, Orry's love interest, while Wendy Kilbourne played Constance, the woman George marries. Kirstie Alley played George's outspoken abolitionist sister, Virgilia. Genie Francis played Orry's sister Brett, and Terri Garber played his other sister, the selfish and scheming Ashton. Philip Casnoff played Elkanah Bent. All of these actors returned for the 1986 sequel, though two roles were recast. Parker Stevenson took over as George's younger brother Billy Hazard, and Mary Crosby stepped into the role of sister-in-law Isabel Hazard. Casnoff's Bent would carry his grudge against Orry and George across two more installments of the story.

• 4. Behind the Camera

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  Richard T. Heffron directed the 1985 miniseries, working from a script by Patricia Green, Douglas Heyes, Paul F. Edwards, and Kathleen A. Shelley. David L. Wolper produced it alongside Paul Freeman, Rob Harland, and Chuck McLain, with Bill Conti composing the score and Stevan Larner as cinematographer. Wolper returned for 1986's Book II with his son Mark Wolper, plus Stephanie Austin and Robert Papazian producing. Kevin Connor directed that installment from a script by Heyes and Richard Fielder, with Conti again composing and Jacques R. Marquette behind the camera. Heaven and Hell: North and South Book III arrived in 1994. Larry Peerce directed it from a script by Suzanne Clauser, produced by Hal Galli. David Bell composed the score for Book III, and Don E. FauntLeRoy served as its cinematographer. North and South premiered on ABC on the 3rd of November 1985. Book II followed on the 4th of May 1986, and Book III aired on the 27th of February 1994. Nearly a decade separated the first broadcast from the last. That gap gave Don E. FauntLeRoy time to shoot Heaven and Hell and earn the American Society of Cinematographers' 1995 award for its third episode.

• 5. A Constellation of Guest Stars

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  Elizabeth Taylor appeared as Madam Conti, the proprietor of a bordello, while David Carradine played the sadistic plantation owner Justin LaMotte. Hal Holbrook portrayed President Abraham Lincoln, and Gene Kelly played Bent's father, Senator Charles Edwards. Robert Mitchum appeared as Colonel Patrick Flynn, and Johnny Cash played the abolitionist John Brown, credited under the alias Captain Smith. Jean Simmons played Orry's mother, Clarissa Main, and Mitchell Ryan played his father, Tillet Main. John Anderson played George's father, William Hazard, while Jonathan Frakes and Inga Swenson played his brother Stanley and mother Maude. Robert Guillaume portrayed the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Morgan Fairchild played Burdetta Halloran, and David Ogden Stiers played Representative Sam Greene. Olivia Cole played Madeline's devoted servant, Maum Sally. Novelist John Jakes' own wife, Rachel, appeared in the sixth episode as Mary Lincoln. Book II brought a fresh wave of guests. Lloyd Bridges played Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and Anthony Zerbe played Ulysses S. Grant. Nancy Marchand played Dorothea Dix, and James Stewart played Miles Colbert. Wayne Newton played Captain Thomas Turner, and William Schallert played Robert E. Lee. Linda Evans played Rose Sinclair, and Olivia de Havilland played Mrs. Neal. By 1994, Peter O'Toole had joined Heaven and Hell as a character billed in the credits as a "louche actor," Sam Trump. By the time Heaven and Hell finished filming, the trilogy had drawn film and television veterans into supporting and single-episode roles alike.

• 6. Off-Screen Romances

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  Filming the trilogy led to four real marriages among its cast and crew. James Read and Wendy Kilbourne, who played George and Constance opposite each other, married in 1988 and now have two children. Jonathan Frakes and Genie Francis had already played a couple on the short-lived NBC soap opera Bare Essence. They married in 1988 as well, after playing Stanley and Brett together. Lesley-Anne Down married assistant cameraman Don E. FauntLeRoy in 1986. The two met while filming Book I, when each was married to someone else, and they later obtained divorces from their previous spouses. Terri Garber married screenwriter Chris Hager, whom she met in 1985 when he worked as a grip on the set of Book II. The couple had a daughter, Molly, in 1986. Garber and Hager's marriage was the only one of the four to end in divorce.

• 7. Ratings, Reviews, and Recognition

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  The 1985 miniseries remains the seventh-highest rated miniseries in television history. Book II, released the following year, met with similarly strong success. Heaven and Hell: North and South Book III, by contrast, fared poorly with critics and audiences alike when it aired in 1994. The trilogy also drew industry recognition throughout its run. At the 1986 Golden Globe Awards, David Carradine and Lesley-Anne Down each received nominations for their supporting performances in the first miniseries. The 38th Primetime Emmy Awards brought the production nominations across several categories, including costuming, hairstyling, makeup, and Bill Conti's music composition. The second installment picked up further Emmy nominations of its own, among them costume design and sound editing. Carradine, along with Hal Holbrook and David Ogden Stiers, returned for Book II in the same roles that had earned Carradine his Golden Globe nomination.

• 8. An Afterlife in Sound and Streaming

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  All three North and South miniseries remain available today on streaming platforms, including iTunes, Prime Video, and Google Play. The Varèse Sarabande Soundtrack Club released the complete score to the original 1985 miniseries as a four-CD box set on the 25th of February 2008. Three of those discs carry Bill Conti's original score, while a fourth preserves the source music used throughout the production. The label followed with the complete score to Book II on the 3rd of October 2008, spread across three CDs. On the 4th of December 2015, a disc titled North and South: Highlights arrived, gathering 76 minutes of selections from the first miniseries' score. That 76-minute disc, released more than a decade after Heaven and Hell first aired, remains for many listeners their first taste of Conti's score today.