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Getting to the Roots of the Miniseries

By Dan Knapp on September 11, 2009 7:59 AM

  • Getting to the Roots of the Miniseries
  • Producer Stan Margulies discusses his Emmy win backstage for the miniseries "Separate but Equal” in 1991.
  • Photo/Courtesy of Ferne Margulies

During his 50-year career in Hollywood, the late Stan Margulies produced several of the most acclaimed miniseries in the history of television, including Roots and The Thorn Birds.

His wife, Ferne Margulies, recently donated his vast archive — including scripts, music scores, personal photographs and correspondence, production records and many other items — to the Cinematic Arts Library at USC.

“It is exceptionally fitting that these papers should be made available to film students because, throughout his life, Stan was devoted to helping and nurturing young people who were seeking a career in the entertainment industry,” explained Mrs. Margulies, president of the Stan Margulies Co. “He was a great mentor to many.”

Stan Margulies’ productions spanned many genres and media, and his work often explored the capacity of popular entertainment to engage social issues and inspire awareness of social challenges.

“While his primary focus as a producer was on providing entertainment for audiences, his most notable and widely recognized achievements included a strong thread of social consciousness,” Mrs. Margulies said. “He firmly believed that entertainment and social consciousness could be combined.”

Margulies launched his producing career in the 1950s as executive producer of the television series Tales of the Vikings. Soon after, he began producing for the silver screen. His film credits include the perennial favorite Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and 40 Pounds of Trouble.

Among Margulies’ many productions, Roots stands out for its popularity — it remains one of the most-watched programs in TV history — and for its enduring cultural impact.

The archive contains correspondence between Margulies and Alex Haley, author of the novel upon which Roots was based. The two met and became friends while Margulies was working on the television adaptation. Many of the letters reveal Haley’s involvement in the production and the lengths to which he and Margulies went to depict the conditions of slavery as accurately as possible.

In the letters, Haley shares his opinions about which actors should be tested for specific roles and suggests several changes to make the script more historically authentic. “In the first nine pages, there needs to be a racial change of the wagon driver, from white to black,” Haley wrote. “A wagon working in the field would not be driven by a white on a slaveholding plantation.”

Beyond Roots, many of Margulies’ productions demonstrated his commitment to social issues. I Will Fight No More Forever depicts the experiences of the Nez Perce tribe in Oregon and Idaho. Separate but Equal, which starred Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall, dramatized the legendary Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. And The Man Who Captured Eichmann tells the true story of the Israeli Secret Service’s efforts to apprehend SS officer Adolf Eichmann in the 1960s.

His other credits include the Golden Globe-winning documentary Visions of Eight, about the 1972 Munich Olympics, The Thorn Birds and a number of celebrity biographies, including those of Gloria Steinem, Shirley MacLaine and the Jackson family.

Margulies’ final production was the posthumously aired 2002 Showtime movie 10,000 Black Men Named George, an account of union activist Asa Philip Randolph’s efforts to organize the black porters of the Pullman Rail Co. in the 1920s.

Throughout his prolific career, Margulies received three Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, a Peabody Award and two Critic’s Circle Awards, among other accolades. In 1996, the American Film Institute named him AFI Producer of the Year.

The Stan Margulies collection will be housed in USC’s Cinematic Arts Library on the ground floor of the Doheny Memorial Library. For more information about the materials available to students and researchers, contact Steve Hanson, head of the Cinematic Arts Library, at shanson@usc.edu or (213) 740-7273.