War And Remembrance

"I wish you all the success in the world for the big chess game you are beginning!" cried Alice. "Goodbye. Goodbye. " - Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1941 Radnor High School yearbook theme. They were not thinking of college, these 132 Radnor High School graduates in 1941, but of war. And with good cause. They graduated on June 5, 1941, and 185 days later, the United States was in World War II. Last weekend, as 55 class members gathered for their 50th reunion, the war and the way it intersected with their lives were still very much on their minds.

Beginning this evening, America can start breathing a little easier: By next Sunday, after five more installments that only seem interminable, War and Remembrance will finally be all over. It's not giving anything away to say that America wins World War II, that Polly Bergen cries a lot and that Sir John Gielgud does some first-rate acting. The final episodes of War and Remembrance will bring its total airtime to 30 hours, thus making it by far the longest mini-series ever made; these concluding chapters will air tonight through Wednesday, with the absolutely last, final, no-more-please-please-please episode running a week from tonight.

It's been widely reported that ABC's $110 million mini-series War and Remembrance is the longest and most expensive of that fading genre. But credit the Wall Street Journal for noting that this money-losing epic took two years to plan, 21 months to shoot and another year to edit - longer than it took the Allies to wage and win the war.

War and Remembrance will offer its biggest set piece of warfare tonight, when the mini-series will re-create the Battle of Midway in 1942 in the Pacific Ocean. The panoramic and powerful depiction of World War II's most important sea battle dominates the third episode of War and Remembrance, beginning at 8:30 p.m. on ABC (Channel 6). C.L. Sulzberger wrote in World War II (1985) that "Midway was one of World War II's most critical battles, ranking in importance with Dunkirk, El Alamein and Stalingrad.

Oddly, War and Remembrance is a glaring failure in the national Nielsen ratings, but it is a big hit in the Philadelphia television market. Probably never before has there been such a huge difference in the national and local viewership of a mini-series. The seventh and final episode of the mammoth $105 million production will air at 8:30 tonight on ABC (Channel 6). A devastating depiction of the slaughter of 30,000 Jews by the Nazis at Babi Yar in the Soviet Union is the centerpiece of tonight's 2 1/2-hour segment.

There's an excitement in the air. The anticipation is almost palpable. Listen . . . hear that faint clicking noise? It's the sound of people all over the nation setting their TVs to their local ABC station, just locking those suckers in for the next couple of weeks, because the massive mini-series War and Remembrance starts tonight. The preceding fantasy exists only in the minds of ABC programmers. Does anybody watch TV like that anymore, make that kind of commitment? Does the news of a World War II mini-series starring Robert Mitchum thrill vast numbers of people?

War is a thriving business at ABC, thanks to the miniseries "The Winds of War" and its sequel, "War and Remembrance. " Yet while ABC executives are patting themselves on the backs for these extravagant showpieces, the one man responsible for them wants no part of the hoopla. Herman Wouk (pronounced woke), the author of these sprawling best-selling novels about World War II, does not do interviews, personal appearances, book- and-author lunches or talk shows. He likes to sit in his Washington, D.C., home and let the other folks talk.

The evening's sentimental high points are undoubtedly the final episodes of Family Ties and Moonlighting, pondered at length elsewhere in this section, but it should also be noted that the world's longest mini-series, War and Remembrance, also concludes tonight. ALL-STAR TRIBUTE TO KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR (Ch. 3, 2-3 p.m.) - A benefit for the Athletes and Entertainers for Kids charity, with the NBA great saluted by celebrities including Whoopi Goldberg, Herbie Hancock, Billy Crystal, Jackee and Gladys Knight.

This is a story about time and money, so stand by for plenty of statistics. Since the subject is television, it would be simple to smuggle in a few extra statistics in the form of ratings. But that won't happen. Ratings are only pseudo-statistics; and besides, too many statistics leave your poor head feeling like an overloaded computer about to go down. In fact, let's get the money numbers out of the way fast, like a Sotheby's auctioneer. We're talking, of course, about the ABC not-so-miniseries War and Remembrance, which cost - got your pen and notebook ready?

If ABC's new 30-hour mini-series, War and Remembrance, doesn't help the flagging network in the ratings, Brandon Stoddard, president of ABC Entertainment, says, "I will burst into tears. " Stoddard told a group of television writers here Monday night that War and Remembrance, a sequel to the 1985 mini-series Winds of War, would begin airing Nov. 13, "whether or not the writers' strike is over. " The five-month strike by the Writers Guild of America threw the fall programming schedules of all three major networks into disarray, and Stoddard indicated that his network would suffer.

THE PILLARS OF THE EARTH. 10 p.m. Friday, Starz. WRITING ABOUT television might not have been as interesting back in the days when there were only a handful of channels, but it had to have been simpler. For one thing, if a TV critic praised or panned a program, chances are it was one most readers would actually have the opportunity to see, assuming the rabbit ears worked. Now? We get what we pay for (or can otherwise track down), whether it's a first look at "Friday Night Lights" - whose seasons now run on DirecTV's 101 Network before coming to NBC - or another two years of "Damages," which won't be available to FX fans unless they're signed up for DirecTV and its 101 Network.

Prominent Civil War Union Gen. George G. Meade and little-known Confederate soldier George Ashmead have been buried in Philadelphia's Laurel Hill Cemetery for more than a century, but only the general has been regularly celebrated. Yesterday, at the site of Philadelphia's first Memorial Day commemoration in 1868, a tradition of honoring Meade at the graveyard on the holiday weekend was followed by an unusual twist: a ceremony across the cemetery in remembrance of Ashmead, the son of a prominent Germantown family whose Confederate affiliation was discovered in recent months.

On a shaded slope in one of Philadelphia's most revered graveyards, a solemn ritual honoring America's fallen warriors yesterday stood in sharp contrast to the region-wide bustle of ball games, barbecues, and trips to the beach. Col. Kenneth O. McCreedy thanked the crowd of nearly 100 gathered at Laurel Hill Cemetery in East Falls for their devotion to those who died in battle. "Many of us forget to pause and remember why we celebrate this day," McCreedy said. "Some today - right now - are undoubtedly shedding their blood on our behalf.

At Rich Papirio's Field of Dreams, there is no time for dreaming, just deep deliberation. If you happened to be looking for the Conwell-Egan baseball coach, there would be no better place to start than the Vincent B. Carosella Field, located directly behind the Catholic high school in Fairless Hills, Bucks County. Of course, it is there that Papirio and his Eagles practice and play games. But it is also there that the 52-year-old social studies teacher and father of a soldier in Iraq tends to his garden, oftentimes alone with his thoughts.

Re "Losing it in Iraq" (letters, Dec. 2): The writer seems not to know that our armed forces are 100 percent volunteer, not a draftee among them. For whatever reason the members of our military sign up, they know and accept the risks. And we are not in Iraq just to "make it safe for those people" - but to take the war to the terrorists' turf and away from ours! Regarding calling our armed forces abroad "children - 18, 19, 20,": Similar "children," referred to as "farm boys" in the '40s, and which many of them in fact were, defeated Germany and Japan.

Across the region yesterday, veterans of America's wars were remembered in Memorial Day parades and solemn ceremonies with flags, patriotic songs and poignant tributes. A light rain held down the size of the crowds, but spirits were high at activities beginning the three-day holiday weekend. More events are scheduled for today and tomorrow. In Philadelphia, about 25 people gathered at Lloyd Hall yesterday afternoon, where folksinger Saul Broudy, a Vietnam veteran, played guitar and performed songs collected from helicopter pilots during his tour of duty in 1966-67.

You wouldn't guess it from the promotions, but NBC is worried that viewers, as fond of switching channels as Goldilocks was of switching beds, might not sit still for five nights of "The 10th Kingdom. " Lindy DeKoven, the executive in charge of the network's movies and mini-series, was recently eaten by a wolf (OK, not exactly, but she's gone) and Garth Ancier, NBC's new entertainment president, is reportedly every bit as keen on the project as Cinderella's stepmother was on seeing her land a royal husband.

Interviewing Robert Mitchum is rather like playing 20 Questions. With a snapping turtle. He's not unfriendly, or even unresponsive - he answers every question promptly - but there's a vaguely amused edge in his voice that suggests the window of opportunity is about to slam shut and that if you don't feed him a question that really interests him - and quickly - you might just get your fingers caught. (Reporter. It's what's for dinner.) The 78-year-old actor, veteran of about 100 movies, several mini-series and even a sitcom, had agreed last week to a phone interview about his role in tonight's episode of "The Marshal," in which he plays the father of Winston MacBride (Jeff Fahey)

A life of reflection may produce art. But George Matthews Harding was a man of action as well as an illustrator, painter, teacher and muralist. Harding's life included world travel and stints as a combat artist in World Wars I and II. He was born in 1882 in Philadelphia. By 1917, at age 35, as an illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post and later Harper's Magazine, he had journeyed to Newfoundland in a seal-hunting vessel, been shipwrecked in Labrador and covered events in Egypt, Australia, New Guinea and China.

"I wish you all the success in the world for the big chess game you are beginning!" cried Alice. "Goodbye. Goodbye. " - Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, 1941 Radnor High School yearbook theme. They were not thinking of college, these 132 Radnor High School graduates in 1941, but of war. And with good cause. They graduated on June 5, 1941, and 185 days later, the United States was in World War II. Last weekend, as 55 class members gathered for their 50th reunion, the war and the way it intersected with their lives were still very much on their minds.