Malcolm Gets, who plays Richard on Caroline in the City, will portray globe-trotting explorer Cutter Dunlap on the season opener, which airs Saturday.

Harry Hamlin, who starred on L.A. Law, will appear as a playwright in the August 23 show. Jason Alexander, who plays George on Seinfeld, will appear October 11, and Joanna Kerns, who starred in the sitcom Growing Pains, will direct the September 6 episode.

This season's first episode will continue a story line started last spring. Just before the show's summer hiatus, Victor Comstock, the station manager, died. (Or did he? After all, this is television.) When Victor reappears at the station, everybody is shocked. Or are they?

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New Season for Remember WENN

by Tom Scanlon (The Seattle Times)

August 16, 1997—Remember WENN, which begins its third season tonight on AMC (6 and 10 o'clock), rivals The Larry Sanders Show as the most sharply written, well-acted show on cable television. Both are bright rejoinders to those who insist the tube is utterly brain dead.

While Garry Shandling's HBO show is hilarious in a savage and very current way, WENN has a sweet, purposefully anachronistic tone to its humor.

Created by Rupert Holmes, who wrote "The Pina Colada Song," the AMC show takes place at a Pittsburgh radio station, circa 1940. A large ensemble is led by Melinda Mullins and Hugh O'Gorman, who play the married radio actors who dig asides into each other's ribs.

While the acting is superior, it is the crackerjack writing that carries WENN to memorable levels.

In the season opener, the show's distinguishing repartee (almost always clever, rarely forced) is in place, with an added spice of poignancy. A legendary character who was presumed dead turns out to be involved in some very dicey anti-Nazi business.

Luxuriously styled after the old movies that regularly play on AMC, Remember WENN has a striking visual quality. Rich lighting, splendidly detailed costumes and vivid photography give it a cinematic feel.

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Cable TV Series Breathes Life into Spirit of '30s Movies

by Diane Werts (Newsday)

August 19, 1997—Is there another show on television as well-crafted as Remember WENN? This AMC original series (starting its third season at 9 tonight) looks great, sounds great, moves great, practically tastes great. (Seems as if there's always food involved, whether it's Juicy Fruit gum, pig's feet or pickled beets.)

The prewar era - that's World War II, of course - comes alive in a Pittsburgh radio station brimming with well-dressed dames, debonair men, busybody loudmouths and more fashion sense than the last 10 Oscar nights put together.

But more than that, this half-hour comedy/drama/mystery/musical has heart, lotsa heart, heart from here to the hoosegow - that's "jail" for those of you who don't speak the language Remember WENN remembers so well. It's never saccharine but often bittersweet, the kind of sentiment that leaves you with lingering longings and a sly grin on your face from its dexterously effortless construction. Just like the movies from the golden era it celebrates.

Creator Rupert Holmes (Broadway's The Mystery of Edwin Drood) proves himself an American treasure in succeeding where the likes of Peter Bogdanovich (At Long Last Love) and Stanley Donen (Lucky Lady) have failed in capturing the style, spirit and savoir faire of the '30s films that practically define the word Hollywood.

Yet Holmes is doing it on a small-screen scale of intimacy, with a crackerjack sense of tube timing. Catch tonight's third-season opener resolving the spring cliffhanger when former station manager Victor Comstock (even the names are delightful) seemed to return from the dead.

Is Comstock (John Bedford Lloyd) really back from the rubble of a London bombing raid? What would that mean for Betty (Amanda Naughton), his wide-eyed, idealistic young staff writer of undying devotion? Or Comstock's successor, Scott Sherwood (Kevin O'Rourke)? Or his old station, which was being used by a sponsor to transmit the codes of Nazi saboteurs!

The season's second episode Aug. 23 only amplifies the delightfully theatrical archness that cements the time period - the precise elocution, the sparkling repartee, the irony and cleverness, as hissing husband-and-wife actors Jeffrey (Hugh O'Gorman) and Hilary (Melinda Mullins) plot their Broadway ascent with backing from disparate husband-and-wife sponsors Louis Zorich (Mad About You) and Peggy Cass.

It's criminal to give too much away in either case, except that Holmes' scripts remain authentically toned and amazingly devised; the guest stars chew the scenery with beaming relish (Malcolm Gets of Caroline in the City played a world explorer Saturday, L.A. Law's Harry Hamlin is a playwright this week); and the series' technical production (it's filmed in New York City) is one of the medium's true wonders.

Pay attention to Holmes' subtle music—from that merry/melancholy clarinet series theme to each week's astute underscore—and its beautifully faded Technicolor tones (the film is manipulated to look like an old-time movie).

But just what is Remember WENN? Is it a comedy? A drama? "A dramedy," suggests Jeffrey. "Or a comma," snaps Hilary.

Never mind the defining. Remember WENN is unmistakably, as another character says, the cat's meow.

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Hamlin's Really a Comic— He Says So, Seriously

by Scott Williams (New York Daily News)

August 26, 1997—Just once, Harry Hamlin would like to be taken seriously — as a comic actor.

"I love doing comedy, but people rarely call me up for those kinds of roles," the L.A. Law mainstay said. "They think I'm a slicer and dicer," he said of his reputation for meticulous dramatic work.

Happily for him, AMC's Remember WENN made the call, and he's pulling out his comic chops this week on the poignant comedy set in a 1940s Pittsburgh radio station. He portrays a playwright who's fine-tuning his next play on the WENN airwaves.

"It's a really awful play, and Euripedes Moss is a very arrogant and ineffective playwright," Hamlin noted.

Crafting the character was easy, he said, since series creator Rupert Holmes wrote Moss as a phony from Hoboken who speaks in a stagey, affected manner.

"My first acting coach was like that, always speaking in these grand tones, so we based the character on that," Hamlin said.

Hamlin rarely works that simply.

Before his L.A. Law days, the actor's career had died largely because of a 1982 movie, Making Love, in which he played opposite Michael Ontkean and Kate Jackson as the Other Man in a homosexual triangle.

"That movie pre-dated the AIDS epidemic, and homophobia had a lot of its classic elements in place," Hamlin said.

The film sank and took him with it. Thus it was a year later he leaped at the chance to audition for the role of Stanley, opposite Ann-Margret, in a made-for-TV version of A Streetcar Named Desire.

He flew to New Orleans and couldn't find the Brooklynese accent Marlon Brando used in Streetcar on stage and in the movie. Real New Orleanians, he found, sound different.

"It's a wonderful accent. They call it Yat — as in, 'Where y'at?'" he said. "It also sounds nothing like Marlon Brando's rendition."

Hamlin hit the French Quarter with a tape recorder, looking for locals.

"I worked my way across the whole Quarter," Hamlin recalled, "and I ended up in a dive at 5 a.m., sitting next to a real Stanley Kowalski, a Polish trucker from the Ninth Ward. In Yat, that's Da Nint' Wuad."

Alert, refreshed and steeped in New Orleans, Hamlin went back to L.A., where he offered an authentic Yat version of Stanley for the audition.

"The director didn't like it, Hamlin said with a weary laugh. "In fact, he practically went ballistic, he hated it so much."

How much?

"He ended up hiring Treat Williams, whose performance was much closer to the Brando interpretation, he said.

"That probably was a wise choice, because Brando did such a fine job."

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Civilization on Rupert Holmes

by Don Aucoin (Boston Globe)

September 1, 1997—Remember WENN is such a terrific show that I've decided to forgive its creator, Rupert Holmes, for writing that abominable "Piña Colada Song" back in the 1970s.

Holmes' loving spoof of old-time radio, which airs on the cable channel American Movie Classics, has no laugh track because it has something better: actual humor. It's a cure for what ails you if what ails you is the adolescent witlessness of most TV sitcoms. But don't take my word for it: Check out Terry Teachout's astute appreciation of Remember WENN in the current issue of Civilization.

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The Case of the Missing Laugh Track

by Terry Teachout (Civilization magazine)

September 1997—A Russian èmigrè once seized my lapel over lunch and informed me, in the ripest possible accent, that the half-hour situation comedy was TV's only truly original contribution to the art of storytelling. (To get the full effect of this splendid pronouncement, imagine its being spoken by Boris Badenov.) Although he had his history askew—sitcoms began in the days of radio—his heart was in the right place. From I Love Lucy to King of the Hill, much of the best of what network TV has had to offer during its first half-century has come in the form of 30-minute playlets, with continuing casts, whose sole purpose is to make you laugh. Situation comedies are to television as Westerns are to movies: Some are wonderful, some appalling, most indifferent, but taken together, they do more than anything else to sum up what the medium is all about.

The history of the sitcom also says something about how American culture has changed since 1948—the year network TV came into existence. The average sitcom used to be as bland as mashed potatoes; now it's as coarse as rock salt. Not long ago, I watched three back-to-back sitcoms in which jokes, none of them especially funny, were made about masturbation. This seemed to me so improbable that I wondered briefly if I'd imagined it, but a TV critic happened to see the same three shows and reported on them a few days later, confirming my suspicion that commercial television has outrun all possible attempts to satirize it. Even the better sitcoms tend nowadays to return compulsively to the subject of sex, and while I hate to sound prudish (on second thought, actually, I don't), it strikes me that there is more to life, and to comedy, than what the bed-happy characters on Moonlighting referred to as "getting horizontal."

A gentle reminder that such is indeed the case can be seen each Saturday at 9:00 p.m. EST on American Movie Classics, a cable channel that devotes most of its airtime to the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Fred Astaire. Two years ago, AMC decided to get into the sitcom business, and it asked Rupert Holmes, whose career has ranged from Broadway shows to pop songwriting (he's the man who wrote what everybody calls "The Piña Colada Song," though the title is really "Escape"), to create its first original series. Holmes responded with Remember WENN, a low-key, low-budget sitcom about the staff of a Pittsburgh radio station circa 1940.

Remember WENN isn't a commercial hit, at least not by network standards—mere cable channels can't muster audiences sufficiently large to crack the Nielsens—but its viewers are all but cultish in their loyalty. "Oh, that's the smart show," said a very hip writer for a very hip magazine when I mentioned that I was a fan. And so it is: smart and funny and touching, as well as so retro that it's almost countercultural. Most other sitcoms are videotaped in front of a live audience whose chortles and guffaws are electronically enhanced; Remember WENN is filmed, movie-style, on a closed set, and the only laughs you hear when watching it are your own. The cast contains no stars (though celebrity guests are turning up with increasing frequency), and the scripts contain nothing naugh-tier than an occasional "damn"; instead, Holmes serves up charm, sentiment and a healthy dose of good old-fashioned door-slamming farce. "I wanted," he explains, "to cross Fawlty Towers with Father Knows Best." The recipe may sound eccentric, but the results are irresistible: I've been telling friends about Remember WENN ever since its debut, and they never fail to fall for it.

What makes WENN work is the utter self-assurance with which Holmes and his sterling cast undertake each week to put a fresh spin on the perfectly obvious. The characters are straight out of Sitcom 101: the spunky scriptwriter, the avuncular station manager, the blasé receptionist, the actor of a thousand voices, the over-the-hill actress and her philandering husband, the sound-effects man who never speaks a word. Nor is there anything particularly original about the stock situations in which these stick figures find themselves enmeshed: In one episode, the entire staff of WENN is placed under quarantine and forced to live at the station for a week, a plot device first seen on TV around the time J. Fred Muggs was stealing scenes from Dave Garroway. Yet that episode of Remember WENN was among the series' most memorable—proof that there are no stale ideas, only stale writers.

A typical example of the quiet way in which Remember WENN goes about its funny business is a recent episode in which the hoity-toity Hilary Booth (who almost always wears a hat) and her unfaithful husband, Jeff Singer (who almost always wears an ascot), kiss, make up and decide to take a whirlwind train trip to Mexico to get married again. First we see them before the trip, cooing lovey-dovey dialogue in the break room: "I don't think I can keep my hands to myself!" "If I were to go strictly with my primitive emotions, they'd have to call in the police!" (This is as blue as Remember WENN gets.) Then, three scenes later, the furious posthoneymoon couple comes storming back into the station, exchanging the very same lines—only this time, it's through clenched teeth. And since there's no laugh track to slam the point home, Holmes trusts you to get it all by yourself.

As if to add to its air of determined unfashionability, Remember WENN is filmed not in Hollywood but in Queens, New York, in an ancient brick warehouse whose only mark of distinction is a turquoise sign identifying it as the home of Broadway Stages. I visited the set recently and found myself in the midst of tightly organized chaos. "Prior to Broadway," the 28th episode of Remember WENN, was being shot (it airs August 23), and the joint was jumping. "Have you ever been on a TV set before?" a serious-looking man whispered in my ear. "Just remember—when they say 'Quiet!' they aren't kidding." Somebody shouted, "OK, stand by. Rolling." A bell rang twice, and I froze in my tracks. "Speed. Take seven. And…action." Then I heard a strangely familiar woman's voice. "A certain sponsor will have me six feet under if a certain star doesn't show within the next 10 seconds," it said, and I thought, "That's Betty!"

It was, of course, Amanda Naughton, who plays Betty Roberts, WENN's spunky scriptwriter. But fact and fiction are sometimes hard to disentangle when you're on the set of a TV series. In order to save money, each episode of Remember WENN is filmed in its entirety with a single camera on a single-unit set—a life-size replica of a small-time radio station—erected in the middle of the huge warehouse that is Broadway Stages. The set looks just like what it purports to be, so much so that it can be highly disorienting to sit down in an art deco chair, pick up a magazine and realize that you're holding a 1940 copy of Screen Guide ("See How Much of a Ham Errol Flynn Is"). It's even more confusing when you look up and see Betty Roberts and Hilary Booth chatting in the hallway, dressed in period outfits and looking just like themselves. You know Betty and Hilary—you see them every week—and for a moment, you forget that the spunky scriptwriter and the over-the-hill actress are actually Amanda Naughton and Melinda Mullins, two real-life people who are paid to read lines written by Rupert Holmes, another real-life person who is sitting in an office miles from here, busily batting out next week's script.

Naughton knows the difference between fact and fiction: She has acted both on and off Broadway for most of her adult life. She also knows a dream gig when she sees one. "Yes, it's a job, but there could be worse jobs," she says with a huge grin, the enthusiastic words tumbling over one another. "The hours are long and you get tired, but it doesn't really feel like a job job. It never has. When I got the audition and read the script for the first episode, I said, 'Dang, I really want this!' It read so beautifully that I laughed out loud, just reading it to myself. Rupert's scripts aren't har-de-har-har and the door falls off the hinges and everybody falls down and somebody gets a pie in the face. It was such a thrill to see something of that quality."

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From the 1997 Fall Preview TV Guide, Changes in Returning Shows Article

September 1, 1997—AMC

Remember WENN: As World War II heats up, so do events at the Pittsburgh radio station where this series is set. Head writer Betty (Amanda Naughton) finds herself at a professional crossroads when she is offered a job at The New Yorker; performer Jeffrey (Hugh O'Gorman) finds himself at a romantic crossroads with station diva Hilary (Melinda Mullins) when a trip to London places their relationship in flux. Look for guest appearances by Boyd Gaines, Harry Hamlin, Daniel Davis, and Jason Alexander.

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Remember WENN Blazes New TV Trail

by Nancy Jalasca Randle

September 10, 1997—From the moment Remember WENN's opening credits roll, it's clear you're in for something unique. The grainy montage unfolds in slow-motion, pictorially peeling away the pages of time. Sepia images of radio's golden age magically appear; the music sets a nostalgic mood and a graceful pace. The characters seem to beckon you to join them in those halcyon days.

While networks strain for success by cloning the familiar, this American Movie Classics comedy series, which began its third season last month, chooses to go its own way. A Tiffany show in a Woolworth's market, Remember WENN marches to the beat of a different drummer. It does so by design. "I'm trying to go completely against the grain of our times," says composer and author Rupert Holmes, the visionary behind the show.

Remember WENN takes place in a small station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the outset of World War II. Amanda Naughton, Melinda Mullins, Hugh O'Gorman, Christopher Murney, Kevin O'Rourke, George Hall, Tom Beckett, Carolee Carmello, CJ Byrnes and Mary Stout star as the actors, actresses, technicians and producers who valiantly get the live radio shows—no easy task—on the air.

An expert on the glory days of radio, the multiple Tony Award-winning Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) worships at the altar of the medium that reigned supreme in America in the 1930s and '40s. He calls radio the "theater of the imagination" and marvels at its ability to send a chill up the national spine "from Maine to Sacramento."

No Sledgehammer Used

Holmes created the personalities, the plots, the musical theme and the original score for Remember WENN's bygone world. He did so to pose an alternative to what he calls the Beavis and Butt-Head point of view: sledgehammer comedy that relies on outrage for success.

In an age of cynicism, Holmes' life-affirming, lighthearted evocation of radioland offers humor grounded in character and the vicissitudes of human nature. More amusing than funny, it is sweet but never cloying, civil but never boring.

"I'm trying to take the friskiness of a stage farce and combine it with a kind of honest sentimentality," says the series' writer and composer. "I embrace what we now think it is cool to turn one's back on."

There is no laugh track on Remember WENN. It is shot on film—not video—and technologically enhanced to emulate the Technicolor movies of the 1940s. Instead of stars, it features accomplished stage actors. Well-developed characters are as important as plot. Even the way people talk is different. In this place and time, words matter. And using them correctly and with flair matters most.

The speech ranges from snappy dialogue a la The Front Page and a politeness that reflects society's appreciation for courtesy to colorful turns of phrase that smack of the times. When was the last time you heard "nervous Nellie," "famished," "what the heck," "malarkey," "swell" or "gosh"? And the manner of speaking is always just a little "high-flown," as Holmes puts it.

"People weren't ashamed to show that they'd come out of the gutter and could sling words with the best of them," he explains.

"The decision to take the creative road less traveled is paying off, both in honors and in popularity. The series has received several award nominations and won an Emmy for costume design and CableAce awards for editing and cinematography. In February, "WENN" received a nomination for a Screen Actors Guild Award for best ensemble cast in a comedy series, competing with such big-budget shows as Seinfeld and 3rd Rock From the Sun.

WENN also has attracted an impressive array of guest stars. In the '97-'98 season Whoopi Goldberg, Jason Alexander and Harry Hamlin join a list that has included Molly Ringwald and the late Howard Rollins.

WENN spawned three fan clubs and has become one of AMC's most popular attractions. It draws the expected — viewers over 50 — and the unexpected — teen-agers, who carry on lively Internet debates about characters and plot points in Remember WENN chat rooms.

Actress Amanda Naughton stars as Betty Roberts, the spirited writer of the show who frequently saves the day. On her dressing room door hangs a photo of Rosalind Russell headlined "The Original Working Girl" and a still of the late Jimmy Stewart. "He's the man I thought I'd marry when I was a little girl," Betty confesses.

The photos provide a thumbnail sketch of the collective soul of WENN's characters: an amalgam of Russell's His Girl Friday and Stewart's You Can't Take It With You with a generous dash of British farce. These lovable screwballs are the reason for Remember WENN's faithful following.

Holmes wanted viewers to feel close to his characters, as though they were watching them from the wings. His choices always aim to nurture the viewer's notion that they have the inside track on this band of stalwarts. So he put the station in the Midwest, stocked it with performers who were local heroes instead of big-time stars, and then showed the chinks in their armor.

Whether it is prima donna Hilary Booth's revelation of a fall from stage performance grace, or Betty's touching idealism, or Mr. Eldridge's dotty and endearing misinterpretations, their vulnerability is the tie that binds the past to the present. "All these people are what we are," Holmes says, "with one layer of armor removed." Their dreams, their successes, their failures, and their troubles cross the time divide.

"I always felt if I plotted it the right way, it would be a place that people would want to go to. It really works best in a continuing series when there is a family there, and you feel you are a member of it. And for that half-hour you feel you are in a place that protects you a little bit. While you're there, the world just evaporates."

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by Jean Prescott (The Biloxi Sun Herald)

October 8, 1997—Despite impressive Broadway credentials, Jason Alexander was a stranger to most of us sofa spuds when he bumbled into our living rooms nearly a decade ago as Jerry's pal George on Seinfeld.

All we know is George, though Alexander also voices USA Network's feathered loser, Duckman.

Perhaps fans of Alexander's stage work will be unfazed by his characterization of Alan Ballinger, mentalist extraordinaire, in Saturday night's new installment of Remember WENN (9 p.m. ET on American Movie Classics). But Seinfeld fans will be doing double-takes all over the place.

Ballinger//Alexander is suave and debonair. He has charm. He has hair!

And he catches the eye of WENN's resident diva, Hillary Booth (Melinda Mullins), whose disintegrating personal life makes her particularly vulnerable.

For the benefit of those who've never watched this Emmy and CableACE-winning comedy half-hour, it is set in Pittsburgh just prior to World War II and focuses on the actors, actresses, technicians and producers at radio station WENN. Understaffed and overwhelmed, they bravely attempt to supply listeners with a daily lineup of live programming.

Ballinger, a guest artist, impresses half of Pittsburgh with what seems to be mental manipulation ("Well, you can't do card tricks on the radio," he confesses). What appears to be magic, though, is merely math; nevertheless Hillary is smitten. At least she is until someone recognizes Ballinger as a scam artist, and then Hillary gets even as only she can.

Alexander, whose Broadway buddye Rupert Holmes created Remember WENN, also directs the episode, and he slips into this stellar cast like a missing puzzle piece.

Remember WENN would be a great Saturday-night habit to get into, but even those unprepared to commit should tune in this weekend just to see George with hair.

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by Tim Feran (The Columbus Dispatch)

October 9, 1997—Remember WENN, the little series that could, makes up in clever production values and droll scripts what it lacks in a budget.

In its third season, the series is getting a boost from famous friends: The added glitter of high-profile guest stars may yet turn Remember WENN from a favorite of critics and devotees into a broader success.

Malcolm Gets (Caroline in the City) has already appeared as globe-trotting explorer Cutter Dunlap, and Harry Hamlin (L.A. Law) as playwright Euripides Moss.

For next season, Whoopi Goldberg is reportedly ready to visit the hard-working, motley staff of the pre-World War II radio station in Pittsburgh.

This week's episode, "Nothing Up My Sleeve," might be the best: Jason Alexander plays the great mentalist Alan Ballinger, star of Magic Time.

"I explore the boundaries of the mind," he says in a pseudo-mysterious murmur to "millions of listeners."

Then he astounds them with "a card trick minus the cards."

"You're another Houdini," a WENN staff member gasps.

When the mentalist points out that, because Houdini was an escape artist, "You're comparing apples and oranges," the unabashed staffer declares, "Well, you're just as much a fruit as he is."

Most impressed is tantrum-prone Hilary Booth (Melinda Mullins), an ex-Broadway star.

Sparks fly as the "master of all things mental" makes a move.

Alexander, best-known to TV viewers as George Costanza on Seinfeld, might be a revelation to those unaware of his background as a Broadway performer.

In a wig and beard, and a magician's cape and suit, he lends an oily assurance to the role that is sublimely hilarious.

That he also directed the episode underlines the range of his talent.

A Remember WENN character may crack that "the great mentalist" does everything "tele-pathetically"—but there's nothing pathetic here.

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by Steve Hall (The Indianapolis Star)

October 10, 1997—Could this really be Jason Alexander—Seinfeld's loser George Costanza—on Remember WENN?

This character's suave! Debonair! A ladies' man!

He even has hair!

But Alexander - veteran of TV, movies, theater and even cartoons (he's the voice of Duckman) - does indeed appear as Alan Ballinger, mentalist extraordinaire, in this charming Remember WENN (3 1/2 Stars) at 8 p.m. Saturday on AMC. He also directed the episode, which was wonderfully written by series creator Rupert Holmes. It boasts the fast-talking, witty repartee you thought went out with screwball comedies in the 1940s.

For the benefit of those who've never watched this Emmy and CableACE-winning dramedy, Remember WENN is set in a Pittsburgh radio station in the 1940s. The actors, technicians and producers struggle daily to give listeners a lineup of live programming.

Guest artist Ballinger impresses listeners and the WENN staff alike with what seems to be mental manipulation—"You can't do card tricks on the radio," he confesses—but is actually math.

Ballinger hopes one plus one equals hanky-panky. Station diva Hilary Booth (Melinda Mullins) is smitten with the smooth-talking mentalist.

She's emotionally vulnerable, since she recently discovered her husband, Jeffrey, was still married to someone else. "That shameless hussy," hisses a co-worker. "I prefer the term 'disease-ridden trollop,'" sniffs Hilary.

She and Ballinger have romance on their minds—that is, until a friend recognizes Ballinger as a con artist. Then Hilary gets even in her inimitable way.

As a director, Alexander is unobtrusive but effective, keeping the episode well-paced and all the actors in peak form. As an actor, he slips so easily into radio station WENN and Ballinger's snazzy suits that you'd think the mentalist's photo had been hanging in the lobby for ages. George who?

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by David Cuthbert (Times-Picayune)

October 10, 1997—Since hitting it big as George Costanza on Seinfeld, Jason Alexander has literally been working overtime to assure us that George is not all he can do. He sang and danced in a TV Bye, Bye Birdie and on Evening at Pops, played flunky to a monkey in Dunston Checks In and brightened the bleak film version of Love! Valour! Compassion! as Buzz, the HIV-positive musical comedy queen.

Now he pops up on AMC's charming Remember WENN series as both guest star and director of tonight's episode, "Nothing Up My Sleeve." Alexander plays—with a great deal of flamboyant flourish—"The Astonishing Ballinger," a magician playing Pittsburgh's Hippodrome Theater in 1941. While in town, he's picking up some extra change on radio station WENN doing a show called Magic Time. If a magician on radio sounds unlikely, just remember that a ventriloquist on radio seemed absurd, too, until Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy proved otherwise.

For his first bit of hocus pocus, Ballantine actually does a card trick over the air. And if you play along with him, you'll find out that it works.

Ballantine says he is not a magician, but "a mentalist—I explore the boundaries of the mind," to which another character cracks, "He sounds like a dime novelist marked down to a nickel."

But station diva Hilary Booth (Melinda Mullins) is a sucker for Ballantine's banter; she falls for him like an Acme anvil in a Road Runner cartoon.

However, there is talk that Ballantine is not just a mentalist but a mental case named Alan Brixton, a lady-killer whose specialty is wooing female celebrities, playing mind games with them and then revealing their most personal secrets as part of his act.

Will Hilary be humiliated on the air? Or will she turn the tables on the unprincipled prestidigitator? And does the half-pint Houdini have one final surprise up his sleeve? To find out the answer to these and other trifling questions, tune in to the next delightful chapter of Remember WENN! (Organ music up.)

As a director, Alexander favors some amusingly outre camera angles, but otherwise is a straightforward storyteller. As a performer, he demonstrates effortless rapport with every member of the WENN ensemble cast with whom he has scenes, particularly George Hall as old Mr. Eldridge.

And creator-writer Rupert Holmes displays yet again his gift for snappy repartee that's very much like that of the movies of the era.

Make no mistake, this show is not much more than a droll vignette, but one that is expertly produced and performed.

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by Ellen Gray (Philadelphia Daily News)

October 10, 1997—Remember when Jason Alexander had hair?

Me neither.

American Movie Classics probably hopes Seinfeld fans who've never seen George in a really bad hairpiece and a goatee but have always longed to will tune in for this week's Remember WENN, in which Alexander plays a radio psychic.

But the network's nostalgic soap opera, already a cult hit, is probably too sentimental for the must-see-TV crowd. Death is sad here, love is lasting, and radio is the center of the known universe.

Set in a Pittsburgh radio station in the late 1930s, WENN follows the lives and loves of the station's staff, including head writer Betty Roberts (Amanda Naughton), "Man of a Thousand Voices" Mackie Bloom (Christopher Murney), diva Hilary Booth (Melinda Mullins), Hilary's sometime husband Jeffrey Singer (Hugh O'Gorman) and my favorite, the sound man, Mr. Foley (Tom Beckett), who appears to have taken a vow of silence.

Thanks to creator Rupert Holmes' vast theater connections, WENN from the beginning has been able to engage in some impressive stunt casting. Sunset Boulevard star Betty Buckley has been a guest star, as has a pre-Townies Molly Ringwald and actress-singer Patti LuPone.

Alexander's the second NBC star to visit in recent months; Malcolm Gets (Caroline in the City) played a famous explorer in the season premiere.

Alexander, chewing scenery like it's going out of style, portrays mentalist Alan Ballinger, who visits WENN, we are told, after making a splash in Athens and Rome. "Sure, he's a big hit in Georgia and upstate New York," grumbles Mackie. "But this is Pittsburgh. This is the big time."

It doesn't take long to discover that Ballinger is not all he appears, but along the way, there's a dash of romance, a soupcon of intrigue and one really good mathematics-based card trick that you might want to tape so you can memorize it and try it out on your friends.

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by Daniel M. Kimmell (The Boston Herald)

October 11, 1997—As the only situation comedy on the American Movie Classics cable channel, it's not surprising that the punningly titled Remember WENN is bathed in a certain nostalgia.

Set at a radio station in the early 1940s, the show features characters who put on the broadcasts that were staples in the pre-television era. Why, then, is the show gaining an audience of college students who can't even remember when TV was in black and white?

Melinda Mullins, who plays dramatic actress Hilary Booth on the show, finds it mystifying. On the Internet, discussion groups and Web sites created by fans are proliferating. "There's a fantastic e-mail thing going on about the show. There's a Hilary and Jeff (Singer, her character's estranged husband) museum, and four different fan clubs. Considering there's hardly any publicity, it's amazing," she said.

As to why younger audiences are tuning in, she credits the quality of the writing. "I don't know what they're nostalgic for," she joked of her younger fans.

The show is the creation of Rupert Holmes, a writer, singer, songwriter and music producer. Holmes has worked with Barbara Streisand, and won Broadway's Tony Awards—for book, music, and lyrics—for The Mystery of Edwin Drood. His Remember WENN scripts have attracted several guest stars to the show, including Whoopi Goldberg, Patti Lupone, Betty Buckley, Harry Hamlin and Jason Alexander (the Seinfeld star, who appears in tonight's episode).

Mullins plays a dramatic star with high-strung emotions, who is always preparing for her return to Broadway. "Some people would call her a bitch," allowed Mullins, who nonetheless sees her as sympathetic. "She gets through things with some arrogance and a bit of dignity."

Hilary is put through a lot on the show, including the discovery that her husband secretly divorced her to marry someone else. Mullins played the scenes at the same time she was going through her own divorce. "Thank you very much, Rupert," she said ironically. The timing was apparently coincidental.

The low-budget show does have one major advantage over its network rivals: no commercials. That means not only no interruptions, but more time to tell the story and develop the characters. "Rupert is watching us at the read throughs and writes to us," explained Mullins. "When we have a guest writer we might question something, but Rupert will step in before I have a chance to complain."

New episodes are airing through Nov. 1, and then in February they begin taping season four. In the meantime, Mullins does commercial voice-over work to pay the bills, auditions and sometimes drops in on a friend to check out the Remember WENN action on the Internet.

"I'm kind of tempted," she said about getting her own computer, "but I'm resisting so far."

Remember WENN airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on the AMC cable channel.

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by Douglas Durden, Times-Dispatch Staff Writer (The Richmond Times Dispatch)

October 31, 1997—Gertie, Remember WENN's well-meaning receptionist, comes out from behind the switchboard at 9 p.m. tomorrow in an episode titled "From the Pen of Gertrude Reece."

A year before the movie Casablanca, she's written Rendezvous in Rabat, a radio play set inside a Moroccan bar featuring an American soldier of fortune, the girl he still loves, and a patriot trying to escape the Germans.

"If we don't tell it, someone else will," says Gertie, thrusting her script into the hands of Betty Roberts, WENN's head writer who usually saves the day, or at least the broadcast.

There's no better place for a Casablanca spoof than American Movie Classic's gentle comedy about a struggling radio station set in Pittsburgh in the early 1940s. (Locally, AMC is on MediaOne's Channel 27, and Comcast's Channel 20). And there's no one more surprising to write it than Gertie.

Gertie Reece is played by Margaret Hall, Broadway actress and former Richmonder with familiar ties to the city and Virginia. She grew up in the Fan, attended St. James's Episcopal Church, went to William Fox Elementary School and Thomas Jefferson High School, and graduated from the College of William & Mary.

On Remember WENN, which premiered in January 1996, Hall plays a character best described as a "gal," a hard-working, plain-speaking and simply dressed widow of a certain age.

But, over the telephone, Hall sounds regal. Perhaps it's all those Broadway credits including Becket, High Spirits, Mame, Sunday in the Park With George and Lettuce and Lovage.

"I've written a whole biography for Gertie," said Hall, asked to fill in the blanks for her character. "I haven't even told Rupert." (That would be Rupert Holmes, creator and writer of the show.)

"Gertie was married when she was about 16 to a young man who was a bicycle mechanic who worked on the railroad. He was killed the day before the Armistice.

"She's never remarried, but she has a rich social life. She sleeps in a hair net to keep her waves in. She's afraid of only one thing - losing this job. She loves it."

And what's not to love? Gertie is part of WENN, a radio station whose small, overworked staff toils every day to present live radio.

In addition to Gertie and Betty, played by Amanda Naughton, WENN's staff includes Hilary Booth (Melinda Mullins), self-styled star of the station, and her now estranged husband Jeffrey Singer (Hugh O'Gorman); Mackie Bloom (Christopher Murney), man of 1,000 voices; Mr. Eldridge (George Hall), absentminded handyman; ex-general manager Scott Sherwood (Kevin O'Rourke); and Mr. Foley (Tom Beckett), speechless sound effects wizard. All of them show up in tomorrow's pun-filled Casablanca spoof.

"It's a nice place to work. It really is. People who watch the show say it has a great sense of family among the people who work there. And it's like that on the set."

Remember WENN, AMC's only continuing series, has slowly but surely developed a loyal following drawn to its comedy, characters and '40s setting.

"It's the script; it's Rupert's writing," said Hall, explaining the appeal of the show.

Compared to other scripts, "it's the difference between taking the edge of your knife and striking crystal and a jelly jar. They're very true, they are very gentle. They are very loving and they are charming."

Hall describes Gertie as the "truthsayer" on the show. She's also the most authentically dressed.

"I said I would like her costumes to repeat because she wouldn't have the money to have a different outfit every week."

Hall has added her own touches to her vintage wardrobe, including a watch she inherited from her aunt, Mary Chappell Hamilton, which she alternates with a watch that belonged to her mother, Charlotte Chappell Hall.

Although her stage credits are many, Hall didn't get interested in drama until after college.

"I was very shy and I was a little shy about trying out for things. I was an English major in college with a minor in fine arts."

She studied acting after college, including with Lee Strasberg. But it wasn't until she got a job with a stock company in Hamilton, Bermuda, that she realized acting was what she wanted to do.

"I told my mother, 'I want to be an actress.' She said, 'Well, my darling, as I understand it, there's not much security in that field. But if that's what you want to do, I'll back you to the wall.'

"Momma was one of those rare people who knew how much space she filled up and filled it with grace and wit and charm. She was as at home frying chicken for hungry actors as she was in an elegant apartment in New York for a reception.

"My first Broadway show was Becket. I was fortunate to work with [Laurence] Olivier. Momma used to come backstage to visit me. All the stage hands knew her. She was at ease there as anywhere else. She and Olivier used to talk about gardens. If I'm good at anything, it's because of her."

Hall is married to Gil Rogers, featured in CBS' Guiding Light. She is no relation to Remember WENN's other Hall, George, who plays the station's elderly handyman.

"George is so dear. He has more energy than anybody. One week, he had a birthday. I don't think I should tell you which one. He opened in Brigadoon, did six radio commercials and did Remember WENN. And did them all well. He's not the doddering Mr. Eldridge you see. He used to dance with Martha Graham; he was among her first male dancers. He can still do a buck and wing. And he moves like a dancer."

And does Tom Beckett, the actor who plays the tight-lipped Mr. Foley, ever speak?

"Indeed he does," Hall said. "One week, when we had lots of lines, I said, 'I don't think Mr. Beckett should be paid as much as us.' But he speaks in 'From the Pen of Gertrude Reece.'"

Well, sort of. The fact that he does and he doesn't is all part of the unusual charm of Remember WENN.

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by Dave Berkman, (Milwaukee Shepherd-Express)

November 6, 1997

[Entry #5:]

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November 11, 1997—No one who lived through 1973's armed takeover at the Wounded Knee reservation in South Dakota would believe the event's ringleader, Russell Means, has become...a Hollywood player? "Never even remotely in my mind did I think I'd be part of the entertainment industry," the famed Indian activist says, laughing. "And now I write music and screenplays and produce CD-ROMs. I have my own production company." Add his guest-starring on AMC's nostalgic series Remember WENN (Sat.), and it appears Means has abandoned the Indian (his preferred word) cause. But, he notes, even acting follows a political agenda. "I grew up in the heyday of Indian killers [in films]," Means says. "Every role I choose and have chosen is an excellent role for Indian people." And he hasn't softened. Asked about the possibility of a Wounded Knee memorial, Means promises that "if it's a government monument, I'll destroy it. I'll consider it an act of war."

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by Adrian McCoy (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

December 21, 1997—American Movie Classics' series Remember WENN is set in a fictional Pittsburgh radio station. So is it any surprise that someone on the show's creative team is a former Pittsburgher?

Paula Connelly-Skorka, director of original program development for AMC and executive producer of Remember WENN, grew up in Shaler and attended the University of Pittsburgh and Point Park College, where she studied film. After graduating in 1980, she headed for New York, where she started out as a negative cutter and was involved in the restoration and preservation of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.

She moved on to Viacom Entertainment, where she was vice president of development and production executive for the D'Antoni Productions Group

"I was the movie-of-the-week queen," she recalls. "I loved it there. I was doing the disaster or accident or woman in jeopardy of the week. You kind of look at the dark side of life working in that kind of situation.

In 1994, Connelly-Skorka was hired to develop series for AMC. "It's a great job. There are no creative boundaries. You can go wherever you want as long as you're being true to what the channel's all about." Along with co-executive producer Howard Meltzer and creator Rupert Holmes, she was involved with Remember WENN from its conception.

AMC took the plunge into original series production with the period series about a '40s-era Pittsburgh radio station and the people who perform or work there. Meltzer was a friend of composer/writer Holmes, a big-time radio buff who has written many of the scripts and the music for the show. That's how the birth of radio station WENN came about.

"The show is designed as a one-act and not a TV series. We're not playing to a commercial break. We don't have a laugh track," Connelly-Skorka says. "We really try hard to stay in the period: We have an audience that, if we do make a mistake, they certainly let us know."

In developing the series, they researched the history of radio, both here and across the country, to make the show accurate and faithful to the period. While Pittsburgh has a long and important history in radio, the show is not based on any particular station, like KDKA or KQV, two of the earliest stations to start commercial broadcasting. "We didn't want this to be a big station. We kind of wanted them to always have a struggle. Pittsburgh, being a city but not New York City, was a perfect place."

Connelly-Skorka's formative years here have had an undeniable effect on the show. "There are references in every single episode to Pittsburgh," she says. Her aunt used to own Bell's Restaurant in Monroeville Mall: There is a Bell's Restaurant on the show. The character of WENN station manager Victor Comstock lives in Shadyside.

Connelly-Skorka attributes the show's appeal to several factors. One, she says, is that it reflects the movies the station runs, keeping the same kind of production values viewers see in the films.

Remember WENN is shot on film instead of video. The single-camera technique is appealing to guest directors, Connelly-Skorka says, and it was something she insisted on to keep the visual quality of the show consistent with that of the films on AMC.

"Video really didn't belong on this channel with these beautiful movies. I thought if we were going to get into the serious game and not be completely criticized by the press and our audience, we had to develop something that was going to feel natural when you went off a movie and on to the series. So I fought to have the show done on film." Because film is more expensive, they compromised by doing fewer episodes in the beginning to stay within the show's budget.

The series has attracted major talent as guest stars and directors - among them this season Jason Alexander, Harry Hamlin, Daniel Davis, Malcolm Gets and Russell Means. Next season's guest stars include Whoopi Goldberg, Kelsey Grammer, Jonathan Frakes and Alexander, who's returning to direct. The show is in negotiations with Lauren Bacall to play the mother of Hilary Booth, one of the characters.

For newcomers to the series, the current season goes into reruns in early January. Connelly-Skorka says this year's upcoming season cliffhanger is "our best ever," but will say no more about it.

Connelly-Skorka has plenty of pilots for other period series in the works at AMC. Next up is Paramour, about a Hollywood photoplay magazine, which probably will air in April.

In January, they'll start production on The Lot, a show about life on a movie studio in 1937. The Lot is structured like Upstairs, Downstairs, with characters ranging from the technical crews to the studio executives, and will track the rise of a young starlet through the studio system. Other projects in the works include a private eye story and a series about the residents of a Hollywood apartment complex.

There are other new projects—like motherhood—in the coming months for Connelly-Skorka. She has been married for six years and her first baby is due in April.

She comes home often to visit her mother and other family members who still live in the area. "If I could do what I do in Pittsburgh, I'd be living there. I miss it very much." She may be doing that—occasionally anyway. Because of the expense of shooting in New York, she is exploring other cities as options—including her hometown.

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