LOS ANGELES -- The character is a mountain woman who is '6-foot-4, raw-boned, ugly and inarticulate,' and the person who helped actress Jane Fonda prepare for the part was 'the only hillbilly' she'd ever spent any time with, Dolly Parton.
Miss Fonda finished filming ABC's 'The Dollmaker,' based on the book by Harriette Arnow, 2 weeks ago. For the actress, doing the story of Gertie Nevels was the realization of a dream that has 'been in my gut' for 12 years.
Gertie, Miss fonda told television critics at previews of ABC's fall season, is a 'woman that is almost unparalled in American literature.
'Gertie Nevels, the character I play, is an incredible woman: brave, strong, vulnerable, spriritual, very ordinary and at the same time extraordinary without knowing it. I felt that by telling her story, one would touch people's hearts very deeply,' Miss Fonda said.
The made-for-TV film, so named because of Gertie's talent as a wood carver, is the story of her struggle to survive when she and her five children move with her husband from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit in 1944. Executive producer Bruce Gilbert sees it as the story of a whole migration that took place, 'not unlike 'The grapes of Wrath,'' which captivated Miss Fonda's father.
Asked why she was interested in playing the part of a huge woman, so unlike herself, Miss fonda said, 'Over the years I often heard my father say when he won his many awards, or sometimes in an interview, that he had been fortunate enough from time to time to play a character that was so remarkable that he improved as a human being -- it perhaps rubbed off on him.'
That was how she felt about 'The Dollmaker' when she read the book in 1971, Miss Fondasaid. 'It's a hymn to the capacity of the human spirit to remain intact and survive in the face of difficulties,' she said.
To prepare for the part, Miss Fonda lived with 'mountain people' in the Ozarks in Kentucky and Tennessee for several weeks, gained 20 pounds and 'thought big.'
Her most help came from Dolly Parton.
'The only time previously that I had spent prolonged time with a hillbilly was with Dolly Parton when we were doing '9 to 5,'' Miss Fonda said. 'Dolly was born in a shack. They made their own soap. They grew their own food.
'She is a mountain woman in the true and real sense and what I love most about her, when she listened to me talk about this project that was so close to my heart, she said there's been too many things done that have stereotyped my people, and if you're going to do it, do it right.
'And two weeks after we finished '9 to 5,' by God if she didn't organize a trip for me and took me through Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas on her tour bus and we'd go as far back in the mountains as we could ...'
Miss Fonda said she spent most of her time listening to the people and they were generous and open with her.
She also used the outhouse, baked biscuits, churned butter, and even milked a cow -- 'I'm just gifted,' she said.
Miss Fonda said she gave the book and the script, written by actor Hume Cronyn and Susan Cooper, to her father. 'Before he died, he was to have played my father.'
'Originally, we thought of it as a theatrical movie,' Miss Fonda said. 'Those of us who grew up on movies, or in movies, tended to have the stereotype about television being one peg down. It was sort of the stepchild of culture.
'And with 'Roots' I realized that certain things are better suited to television, and if you can do something good on television, you're going to have a much greater impact than you are doing a feature film.'
The story also needed 3 hours to be told, she said.
'It felt real good to know that the people that this movie is about, and they're poor people, will be able to see it. There are people who haven't been to movies in years, they can't afford it. And if they don't have television, if they don't have electricity, their children do.'
Her five children in the movie were found after a talent search across the south -- in Knoxville alone 6,000 people turned out. Child actors were not used.'It's a difficult accent, you can't teach it to children.'
The children are played by Jason Yearwood and Nikki Creswell, both of Knoxville, Tenn., David Brady Wilson of Mobile, Ala., Starla Whaley of Cleveland, Tenn., and David Dawson of Maryville, Tenn.
Levon Helm, who played Loretta Lynn's father in 'The Coal Miner's Daughter,' also stars in the film.
The air date has not been set.
