Remember WENN

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Remember WENN was an Emmy-winning television series that aired from 1996 to 1998 on the cable cannel American Movie Classics. Created and written by Rupert Holmes and set at the fictional Pittsburgh radio station WENN in the early 1940s, it depicted events (both dramatic and comic) in the personal and professional lives of the station's staff in the era before and during World War II. It is not related to the real "WENN" radio station in Alabama.

The show ran for four seasons totalling 56 episodes, including an hour-long Christmas episode. The series was slated for a fifth season, but was abruptly cancelled when new management took over AMC.

[edit] Major characters

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
  • Betty Roberts, played by Amanda Naughton, was originally hired as an unpaid writing intern, but was able to resolve a crisis in the first episode and was hired as a salaried writer. While she primarily remains a writer during the course of the show, she has also acted, sung, and done announcements and advertisements on air, negotiated with sponsors, and run the station on many occasions. She is sweet-natured but not a pushover; an optimist, yet not a Pollyanna. She is the main character of the show.
  • Scott Sherwood, played by Kevin O' Rourke, is Victor Comstock's successor as station manager and was introduced at the end of the first season. Originally, Scott was written as a money-grubbing businessman who clashed with Betty Roberts over the direction of the radio station. After a couple of episodes, Scott stopped running the station as a tyrant after he became involved with the personnel at the station, especially Betty. While Betty was at first taken aback by his used-car salesman approach to radio and was never comfortable with them, it became obvious that she was as attracted to him as he was to her. At the beginning of third season Scott was exposed as a fraud (he had forged the letter from Victor that appointed him as station manager) and fired from his job. Betty responded to this by giving Scott a job as an actor on the show, but lost her trust in him, although he was slowly regaining it as the series came to a conclusion.
  • Jeff Singer, played by Hugh O' Gorman, acts as the romantic lead in many WENN productions. He has an on-again, off-again relationship with the actress Hilary Booth. One of the main running gags of the series was the two having to perform a weekly program which portrayed the two as a loving, married couple despite the fact that the two had an aggressively adversarial relationship that included a quickie marriage that ended with an even quicker divorce.
  • Hilary Booth, played by Melinda Mullins, is a former Broadway star who stars in many WENN productions. She is often a melodramatic diva and is insecure with her radio career in relation to her more successful Broadway career. She has a shaky, adversarial relationship with fellow actor Jeff Singer, to whom she was married very briefly. While tension exists between the two, Hilary is extremely protective of Jeff, though she'll never admit it. She also has a softer side that is revealed in several episodes, but it is rarely shown.
  • Mackie Bloom, played by Christopher Murney, is the station's "Man of a Thousand Voices". Middle-aged, plump, and balding, Bloom often finds himself trying to break out of his role as "the guy with the funny voice," wishing to do more romantic roles rather than character pieces, but finds that his appearance limits him to the world of radio. Despite his ambitions, Bloom is often the most level-headed of the cast and often plays a fatherly role to his co-workers.
  • Mr. Foley, played by Tom Beckett, is a foley artist. His notable characteristic, ironic when compared with his profession, is that he does not speak at all, at least onscreen. (Apparently offscreen he is a prodigious speaker.) He has been constantly overshadowed by his bombastic brother Blair, which may account for his silence. He is very good at his profession and frequently comes up with inventive ways to obtain just a certain sound effect. Near the end of the series, he was developing a relationship with Eugenia Bremer, the station organist.
  • C.J. McHugh, played by C.J. Byrnes, is the station engineer. He has also filled in as announcer when needed and has done sports broadcasts. He has a (mostly) unspoken crush on Betty.
  • Maple LaMarsh, played by Carolee Carmello, a brash, spirited radio actress who originally came to WENN as a replacement musician when Eugenia Bremer was doing a midnight-to-eight a.m. broadcast. Maple has a checkered past, which includes having worked in burlesque theatres. She also admits to several steamy relationships, including one with Errol Flynn. She is an old friend of Scott Sherwood, who recommended her for the job.
  • Eugenia Bremer, played by Mary Stout, is WENN's organist (except for the few months when she had a midnight-to-eight a.m. program on her own), providing theme songs and background music for WENN programming. When series and special broadcasts don't work out, she's often called on to fill in with musical interludes. Eugenia is plump and slightly shy, but extremely good-hearted. She also teaches piano and is an organist at her church. Later in the series she became involved with Mr. Foley.
  • Victor Comstock, played by John Bedford Lloyd, was the station manager during the first season of the series. At the end of that season he was asked to go to London to broadcast on the BBC and was supposedly killed in a bombing raid in London. In reality Victor was asked to pretend to be a pro-Nazi American broadcaster named Jonathan Arnold and infiltrate Nazi broadcasting. He was unfortunately discovered and brainwashed by the Nazis, and returned to WENN "programmed to kill." He recovered and returned to running WENN as well as making frequent trips to Washington, DC, to do broadcasts supporting the Allied cause.
  • Tom Eldridge, a retired Broadway doorman played by George Hall, fills in on broadcasts when needed as well as doing housekeeping chores at the station. He is a sweet, rather doddering old fellow with peculiar logic, but sometimes can be sharply perceptive.
  • Gertrude Reese, or Gertie, played by Margaret Hall, is the station switchboard operator. She has a tart tongue, especially for Hilary Booth, who looks down on her, but she can also be conspiratorial or kind as the mood takes her. Gertie dabbles in writing occasionally.
  • Celia Mellon, played by Dina Spybey, an ambitious young actress who worked at WENN during the series' first season. She claimed to be related to the wealthy Pittsburgh Mellon family, but was in reality a maid who had worked for the family. Celia, blonde and perky, but slightly ruthless, ran afoul of Hilary Booth by flirting with her husband Jeff Singer in the second episode and the two women had an uneasy truce thereafter. Celia eventually did a movie screen test and appeared in a film called "Amorous Airwaves," leaving the station to sleep her way up the ladder in Hollywood.
  • Enid Fairleigh, played by Melissa Dye, is a very young and inexperienced acting student who works as an intern at WENN. She appears in only a few episodes.
  • Gus Kahana, played by Jeff Bergman, is an acting student who works as an intern at WENN. He appears in only a few episodes. When he is not working as an actor, he drives a truck that ships oranges and grapefruit from Florida. His specialty is celebrity imitations.
  • Lester (no last name given), played by David Pursley, is the night engineer at WENN. When the C.J. character leaves after third season, Lester is promoted to his job.
Spoilers end here.

[edit] Notable guest stars

[edit] External links

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