The Windsor Star - December 5, 1987

"Anne is all grown up in Green Gables sequel"
Ted Shaw

Canada's newest sweetheart, Anne of Green Gables, is returning to win back the hearts she stole two years ago on TV.

But the Anne Shirley we loved dearly then, the redheaded waif with a stormy temper and a sunny wit, is now a sober, refined young lady and happiness isn't just a buggy's ride away anymore.

This Sunday and Monday nights, CBC will air the five-hour mini-series, Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel , a rapturous second visit with the character who melted our collective hearts in December 1985.

If anything, this second helping of Anne is more enjoyable than the first. Producer-director Kevin Sullivan, who did the first Anne, has conquered the sophomore jinx.

Most of the principles are back: Megan Follows as Anne; Colleen Dewhurst as her adoptive mother, Marilla; Patricia Hamilton as nosy Rachel Lynde; Jonathan Crombie as love interest, Gilbert Blythe; and Schuyler Grant as Anne's closest friend, Diana.

There are riveting new forces in Anne's life: A stern fellow teacher, marvellously portrayed by Rosemary Dunsmore, and a crotchety matriarch played by Wendy Hiller.

And, of course, there's the real star, that glorious never-never land of Prince Edward Island which Anne's creator, Lucy Maude Montgomery, imagined in her turn-of-the-century novels.

It's a time and place that exists only in our fondest memories and Anne, too good to be true, is the capsulization of our most romantic dreams of adolescence.

It's no accident both these Annes arrived on Canadian television in the grip of a chilly early December. The dream is enhanced by photography director Marc Champion's loving portraits of some of Canada's prettiest summer locales.

When Anne of Green Gables was first shown, it attracted the largest audiences for drama in Canadian television history, 4.2 million the first night and 5.8 million the second. Last year, the repeat showing of the original attracted 3 million viewers.

Expectations are running high those original numbers can be eclipsed or even topped this time. They probably will, based on a flood of advance publicity, CBC's on-air promotions and the success of last spring's showing of the sequel on the Disney Channel in the U.S.

But it won't be success unearned. Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel is a triumph precisely because it's a sequel. Sequels that can stand on their own without the crutch of the original are virtually unheard of these days, unless you call George Lucas or Sylvester Stallone.

Now, Kevin Sullivan can be added to that list.

Sullivan, a 31-year-old Torontonian who wrote, produced and directed both the original and the sequel, looks more like the president of a high-school debating class than the phenomenally successful film producer he is. On the shoulders of Anne Shirley, one of the country's national treasures, Sullivan has established himself as a cultural treasure.

He is spreading Canadiana, even if it never really happened, to 77 countries at last count. In the United States, audiences and critics took Anne into their hearts as a kindred soul. She represents the kind of simple values Americans like to think they once had.

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES barrelled right into the American consciousness like an express train, prompting Disney, the children's entertainment specialists, to put up the seed money for the sequel. Almost one-third of the sequel's estimated $4.8-million budget came from Disney, with the rest coming from CBC, Telefilm, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Britain's Channel 4.

The original got top ratings in Great Britain, Australia, and the Scandinavian countries. CBC Enterprises has released the video cassette of the original and will have the sequel out soon. As well, in the best tradition of popular American hits, "Anne" memorabilia and collectibles, toys, china and stationery are being peddled.

The world is coming to know that little girl of the Island as its own. In the process, Canadian television and film are reaping the benefits of a high profile and a superstar is being groomed in Megan Follows.

As Toronto-based film critic Martin Knelman says in his new book, Home Movies: "Anne of Green Gables and the sequel . . . are jointly the shining symbol of a startling turnaround in the Canadian film industry."

So, what did Sullivan do for an encore? First of all, there was no question there would be a sequel, he said.

"Because of the audiences' response, not just in Canada, but around the world," he said, "we all wanted to know what happened to Anne. And somehow, we just didn't want this fairy tale to end."

But he quickly states there likely won't be an Anne of Green Gables III: "Everybody was excited about the sequel, but once it was over, we all felt the story had been told. . . . I think it's best now to just let the two series exist on their own."

LIKE THE ORIGINAL , the sequel was shot in P.E.I. and Ontario. An interesting sidelight of the shooting is CBC and the rest of the financiers helped set up a senior-citizens home in Port Hope, Ont. Sullivan's crews were allowed into an old 19th-century mansion only after agreeing to partially restore it for the developers.

Other interiors were filmed in Hamilton's Dundurn Castle.

Much of Megan Follows' teen years have been spent coming to grips with Anne Shirley, but the experience has been worthwhile, she insisted.

"In the sequel, Anne is beginning to deal with issues that affect her womanhood, her career," said Follows, "and, at 18, I'm also dealing with the same issues.

"Anne will always be a romantic, but in some ways, her fairy tale ends in the sequel."

Follows admitted to some reservations about being typecast as a precocious dreamer, but there's no denying Anne Shirley has been her passport into many agents' offices in the last two years: "Once we were on a roll, well, we were on a roll. The sequel was bound to happen.

"But I'm not that worried. I'm still young and I can do a lot of things yet. Sometimes, though, I really wonder if the people in this acting business have any imagination. I'm not Anne of Green Gables. Nobody is!"

The sequel is based on the three Montgomery novels that followed Anne of Green Gables - Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, and Anne of Windy Poplars. The story traces Anne's growth into early womanhood and her decision to leave Avonlea to pursue a teaching career. She takes a job at a private girls' school in Nova Scotia where she eventually meets an older, dashing widower, Morgan Harris, played by Frank Converse. HER BUDDING relationship with Harris prompts Anne to decide home iswhere the heart is and she eventually returns to Avonlea and the arms of Gilbert Blythe.

Sullivan said "Anne-ophiles" may be disturbed by his blending of the storylines of the three novels - the character of Mrs. Harris, played to the hilt by British actress Wendy Hiller is actually a compilation of three different characters.

But the "filtering process" was necessary to overcome the episodic nature of the books: "I think people who know the books will look at this and say, 'Yes, that's Anne, that's the way it happened in the book,' even if it's not quite the way they remember it."

Sullivan was after more than just a story well told: "The real challenge in doing it was trying to incorporate the enormous wealth of Montgomery material into a cohesive story that works at several different levels.

"The spine of the story is Anne and Gilbert and what happens to them, but in the process of it, it becomes almost a fable of Anne's view of life."

As Follows later remarked: "Anne may not go into raptures over a field of wheat anymore, but there are other things going on inside her that make the story just as interesting."

Still, once production ended on Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel last spring, Follows had had just about enough of Anne Shirley. She promptly ran to a dressing room, took off her corset and burned it in an impromptu ceremony watched by the cast and crew.

Said Sullivan, laughing: "I think all that was left were the stays."

Source: The Windsor Star