Ex-TV
producer finds a new drama: Teaching
( The Washington Times ) Doug Johnson; 02-21-2000
JOPLIN, Mo. - Smoke billowed from gutted buildings near Joanne Brough' s home.
Student protesters rioted in the streets. The Indonesian economy was teetering,
and rioters in Jakarta were demanding a change of leadership.
Mrs. Brough and her husband, Charles, caught in the middle of a fight they
barely understood, were forced to flee, leaving their possessions behind.
The former producer and developer of prime-time soap operas, such as "Falcon
Crest" and "Dallas," was accustomed to drama and intrigue, but she never counted
on getting caught in a real national crisis.
She was working for two years in Jakarta helping to produce a locally grown
soap. "Toward the end, there were armed guards in the studio and barbed wire
around everything," Mrs. Brough says.
A year and a half later, Mrs. Brough has landed back in her hometown of Joplin -
a quiet nook in southwest Missouri "just right for someone who had to escape a
revolution."
Semiretired now, Mrs. Brough, 71, is on to Act 2 of her life, teaching a TV
scriptwriting course twice a week at Missouri Southern State College.
"Does anyone know what a cliffhanger is?" she asks her students during one
recent class as she loads a "Falcon Crest" rerun into the VCR.
In the clip, the vineyards of the show's California valley have fallen victim to
an earthquake. A woman rushes around her house calling out for her fiance, then
finds him dead on the floor.
"It doesn't hurt if you have a cliffhanger at the end of every scene, " Mrs.
Brough explains.
By now, Mrs. Brough's students realize that her resume reads like a page from TV
Guide: For most of the 1960s and '70s, she oversaw the development of such
series as "Kojak," "Hawaii Five-O," "All in the Family," "MASH," "Dallas" and
the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" at CBS.
In 1978, she moved over to Lorimar Productions and became vice president of
creative affairs for all on-air programs and in 1986 was promoted to executive
producer of "Falcon Crest," where she stayed for four years.
For a woman who spent nearly half her life running a piece of Hollywood, Mrs.
Brough is humble, but not without confidence - a strange mix of your favorite
aunt and "Falcon Crest" matriarchAngela Channing.
She also likes chatting about the hundreds of TV personalities she hired and
worked with. Jane Wyman was one of her favorites.
In 1991, Mrs. Brough traveled to Rome to film "Killer Rules," a two- hour TV
movie about the Mafia. She then spent three years in Singapore developing
"Masters of the Sea," the first English-language drama on Asian television.
Her biggest challenge came in 1996 when Indonesia's No. 1 network, RCTI, asked
Mrs. Brough to create from scratch an in-house drama department.
She was to produce a local soap opera along the lines of "Dallas." So she set to
work on "Dua Sisi Mata Uang" ("Two Sides of the Coin" ) - a
J.R.-Ewing-meets-the-Waltons brand of show.
Americans might not have recognized it as a soap: Local customs meant no kissing
on screen, and the budget was a mere $42,000 per episode, compared with about $1
million for "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest."
Mrs. Brough managed to film 26 episodes before the civil unrest in 1998 forced
her to evacuate. She and her husband moved back to Joplin a year ago. The
teaching job keeps her busy, and she plans to take her class on a study tour of
Hollywood and Singapore this summer.
Her other favorite pastime? Watching her old TV shows, especially when her name
appears in the credits. "That never gets old," she says.
Copyright © 2000 News World Communications, Inc. |
