This 1976 miniseries was the first to air under the NBC umbrella title Best Sellers– an anthology series made up of several serialised novels.
Taylor Caldwell’s big, sprawling story of three generations of an influential Irish Catholic family was shown in eight parts with a large cast.
Joseph Armagh, an Irish immigrant boy, lands in New York in 1857 and embarks on a quest to carve fame and especially fortune out of the most meagre of beginnings. He is faced with impossible odds from the outset: His mother dies on the ship, he is left to take care of his younger brother, Sean, and sister, Mary, and when he gets to his father’s house in Philadelphia, he finds that the man has died.
After arranging for his young siblings to be placed in an orphanage, Joseph (played by John Doran as a child and Richard Jordan as an adult) gets a job in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, graduates to running bootleg whiskey for the rather unsavoury R. J. Squibbs (Ray Bolger), and escapes to the oil fields, where he buys up seemingly worthless oil leases (that soon pay off substantially when the technology arrives to drill deeper).
He drives wagons full of chemical explosives to make big money, loses his innocence to Martinique (Barbara Parkins, pictured), the seductive housekeeper of his powerful friend, oil baron Ed Healey (Charles Durning), and goes into the gun-running business during the Civil War.
After a few years of successful gun running, Joseph becomes a partner in Healey’s oil company, and falls in love with his daughter, Elizabeth (Blair Brown).
When he learns of the unrequited love of the dying Katherine Hennessey (Joanna Pettet), he promises her that he will wed her daughter, Bernadette (Patty Duke Astin), before Katherine’s jealous husband, Tom (Vic Morrow) – the rich son of a slave trader, and a stereotyped Irish drunk and general bum who is going to be a US senator – goes too far in a salacious attack on Joseph.
Joseph fathers four children with Bernadette – Rory, Kevin, Anne-Marie and Brian – even as he seeks to avenge himself on her father for depriving him of the two great loves of his life.
Bernadette eventually learns through a private detective that Joseph is having an affair with Elizabeth Healey Hennessey, who is now her own stepmother. She confronts Elizabeth, with an unexpected outcome for both women.
Meanwhile, Joseph’s ruthless determination to block passage of the Alien Contract Labor Bill in the Senate leads him to blackmail the upstanding and honourable Senator Enfield Bassett (Henry Fonda), resulting in suicide and a lasting curse for the Armagh family.
Harvard student Rory Armagh (Perry King) romances Marjorie Chisholm (Jane Seymour) – the daughter of the staunch Protestant Judge Chisholm – and marries her in a secret civil ceremony, defying the wishes of their fathers.
Meanwhile, his sister Anne-Marie (Ann Dusenberry) finds her relationship with Courtney Wickersham (Terry Kiser) shattered through no fault of their own.
Later, while Rory searches for his brother Kevin (Doug Heyes Jr.) with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the jungles of Cuba, Joseph quietly orchestrates the annulment of Rory’s marriage to Marjorie.
Finally, after being rescued from his broken-hearted and drunken state by his uncle Sean (David Huffman), who is now a labor leader in Chicago, Rory bows to his father’s wishes and weds the social but rather dumb Claudia Desmond (Cynthia Sikes Yorkin), the daughter of tough railroad tycoon Charles Desmond (Robert Vaughan).
With the aid of his younger brother, aircraft industrialist Brian Armagh (Cliff De Young), he seeks the Democratic nomination for President over Woodrow Wilson, and almost wins the presidency, but is assassinated.
The reappearance of Marjorie on the eve of the nominating convention poses an unexpected problem, and fate has an even more crushing surprise in store for the ruthless Joseph.
Burl Ives had a cameo role as “Old Syrup”.
Naturally enough, there were parallels drawn with the rise of the Kennedy family.
Joseph Armagh
John Doran (1)
Richard Jordan (2) Bernadette Hennessey Armagh
Patty Duke Astin Ed Healey
Charles Durning Senator Enfield Bassett
Henry Fonda Rory Armagh
Perry King Anne-Marie
Ann Dusenberry Sister Angela
Celeste Holm Judge Chisholm
John Houseman Marjorie Chisholm Armagh
Jane Seymour Harry Zieff
Harvey Jason Tom Hennessey
Vic Morrow Katherine Hennessey
Joanna Pettet Elizabeth Healey Hennessey
Blair Brown Charles Desmond
Robert Vaughn Mrs Finch
Ann Sothern Mary Armagh
Katherine Crawford Brian Armagh
Cliff De Young Martinique
Barbara Parkins R.J. Squibbs
Ray Bolger Gentleman
Bernard Behrens Claudia Desmond
Cynthia Sikes Yorkin Sean Armagh
David Huffman Courtney Wickersham
Terry Kiser Kevin Armagh
Doug Heyes Jr.
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He drives wagons full of chemical explosives to make big money, loses his innocence to Martinique (Barbara Parkins, pictured), the seductive housekeeper of his powerful friend, oil baron Ed Healey (Charles Durning), and goes into the gun-running business during the Civil War.
