Here's an article from the Catholic News Service, that is distributed to all Catholic Newspapers throughout the country:
PAULIST-HALLMARK Jan-13-2011 (790 words)
Paulist Productions gets co-producer credit on new Hallmark TV movie
By Mark Pattison
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) - The next "Hallmark Hall of Fame" made-for-television movie will feature a couple of firsts -- a rarity for the venerable TV franchise, which has logged more than 200 such movies over the decades.
For one thing, Paulist Productions is getting a co-producing credit on "The Lost Valentine," slated to air Sunday, Jan. 30, 9-11 p.m. EST on CBS.
For another, it will be the first Valentine's Day-themed Hallmark movie. "This is pretty astounding, considering how many valentine cards they sell," mused Paulist Father Eric Andrews, the head of Paulist Productions for the past year and a half.
Hallmark Productions worked with CBS to air last year's Christmas movie over this past year's Thanksgiving weekend so that Hallmark could devote more time to properly promote "The Lost Valentine."
The movie stars Betty White as the wife of a World War II soldier who left the home front for the Pacific theater on Valentine's Day -- their first wedding anniversary -- and some months later was reported missing in action. Every Valentine's Day since, White's character has returned to the train station in a stoic vigil to wait for the man who promised to return to her.
She gets some help in solving the mystery of his disappearance from a TV news reporter played by Jennifer Love Hewitt of "Ghost Whisperer" fame; Hewitt is listed as one of the movie's executive producers.
The Paulist connection came courtesy of Barbara Gangi, the film's producer and a board member of Catholics in Media Associates.
"I was waiting for a plane, I went to the airport gift shop, I saw this novel, and it looked like a cute little romance, set in the Forties," Gangi told Catholic News Service from her home in Burbank, Calif. She read it and loved it, but promptly forgot about it.
"Several years later, someone brought me a script. I thought, 'Gee this sounds familiar,' and sure enough it turns out to be the book that I had read," Gangi said. "I took it to Hallmark. It was the only place I shopped it. ... They loved it. Four years later, it was a process of licensing and contracts, but it finally got made."
Gangi's partner in the production was Paulist Father Frank Desiderio, Father Andrews' predecessor as head of Paulist Productions. Father Andrews said it was only a matter of timing that his own name is on the closing credits and not his predecessor's.
But it was also timing that led to the teaming of White and Hewitt to head the cast. White's been on a hot streak unprecedented for many Hollywood octogenarians since the Television Critics Association gave her its lifetime achievement award in July 2009, which led first to a popular Snickers commercial, then a successful Facebook effort to have her guest host "Saturday Night Live." White now co-stars in a hit cable-TV comedy, "Hot in Cleveland."
"She told her agent, 'I'm not going to do any more movies. I don't want to take the time, and I'm not going out of town,'" Gangi told CNS. "I took it to her agent (and he said), 'She told me: "Don't bring any more scripts." But I'm going to give it to her because it will resonate with her."
White read the script at her agent's insistence. "I cried it when I read it," she reported, "then I cried the next 10 times I read it. I want to do it, but don't take me out of town too long." The filming schedule in Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn., was a compact 25 days.
The chances of getting Hewitt attached to the project, Gangi said, were "not that great because at the time she was doing 'Ghost Whisperer.' We went back and forth and Betty came on, and Jenny's series was canceled, so it was a matter of all these great forces coming together at once."
Father Andrews, talking to CNS from Paulist Productions headquarters in Pacific Palisades, Calif., raved about White's performance. "She's known for comedy, but to see her (character) grieve helpfully, to get in touch with her feelings and be able to emote about them, is just incredible," he said.
"I was a big 'Password' fan, Father Andrews added, referring to the popular daytime game show hosted by White's late husband, Allen Ludden. "The way he presided on television, I picked up some of those traits when I preside at Mass."
When Father Andrews told this to White on the set, "she teared up and said, 'You don't know how much that means to me. His birthday was a couple of days ago.' She cried. We both cried."
CNS staff critic John Mulderig gave a hearty endorsement to "The Lost Valentine," calling it "that current rarity: quality programming appropriate for all ages."
END
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