A look at Amanda Wingfield of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie.
A look at Ruth Younger of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.
When the real-life Rose Hovick looked around at her life in Seattle in the early 1920s, what she saw was in confinement. In Gypsy, Rose mirrors that story, packing up her two small girls, one of whom was genuinely talented, and heading out to find any lodge hall, church basement or vaudeville theatre where she could get them on stage. She is everyone's best example of the world's worst mother. One daughter abandons her, and the other becomes the world's highest-paid burlesque stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. Show business creates larger-than-life characters, and none is larger than Rose ... Momma Rose, Madame Rose ... a woman who pushed her children into the spotlight, and in the process, cast a shadow over the rest of their lives.
A unique line-up of Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Golden Globe winners will star in a unique Character Studies documentary special, launching this summer, on PBS. Hosted by veteran stage and screen actor Eli Wallach, [whose distinguished career stretches back to 1945], the documentary about Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town will feature, among others, Frances Conroy [HBO's 'Six Feet Under'], Eric Stoltz ['Mask'], Cynthia Nixon [HBO's 'Sex and the City,' Broadway's 'Rabbit Hole'], James Naughton [Broadway's 'Chicago'], Stephen Spinella [Broadway's 'Angels in America'] and Paul Newman ['The Color of Money,' 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' 'The Hustler']. "James Naughton directed the compelling revival of this great play at the Westport Country Playhouse, in Connecticut," explained Executive Producer Tony Vellela, "and then repeated his work when it transferred to Broadway, and then to a filmed version. All the actors have performed roles in Our Town on stage, or on film. For Character Studies, it sign