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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Television»Drama
    Drama TV Shows - 1980s 3 Mins Read

    Celebrity

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    1 9 8 4 (USA)
    3 x 100 minute episodes

    A gunshot is fired in a small cabin outside Fort Worth. Inside are three lifelong friends: Kleber Cantrell, Mack Crawford and TJ Luther. One of them is dead, one critically wounded, one suspected of murder.

    That is the dramatic opening of Celebrity, the blockbuster miniseries shown over three nights and based on the best-selling novel by Thomas Thompson.

    Celebrity was packed with just about every soap opera device – and vice – imaginable: jealousy, madness, homosexuality, violence, sex, stardom, evangelism and – in a story full of twists of fate – a sensational nail-biting murder trial ending.

    The scene in the cabin was the bloody outcome of a secret the three ‘golden boys’ had kept for 25 years. At high school in Texas – where they were known as ‘The Three Princes’ – a heavy night of drinking had turned to violence with a brutal attack on a teenage girl. As they grew up and lived out the promise of their success, the secret haunted their lives.

    Kleber Cantrell (Ben Masters) was the ‘prince of power’, the born leader, the ambitious boy voted ‘most likely to succeed’, who became a world-famous journalist and scooped everybody with an interview with the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, President Kennedy’s assassin.

    The ‘prince of charms’, McKenzie ‘Mack’ Crawford (Joseph Bottoms) was voted ‘most handsome’ and ‘best all-round athlete’ at high school, a golden boy who became a film sex symbol but who had problems living out that role away from the screen.

    The ‘prince of temptation’, TJ Luther (Michael Beck) was a smooth-talking, hard-luck hustler who found God and ended up as a “faith-healer” and the flamboyant leader of a controversial cult.

    District Attorney Calvin Sledge (Hal Holbrook) and Assistant DA Martha Dalton (Jennifer Warren) delved into the trio’s past in an attempt to unravel the mystery of the shooting.

    With its steamy Texas milieu and the turbulent gist of it all, the miniseries received enormous acclaim when it was aired in the US in 1984. It aired in the UK over three nights on ITV in April 1985.

    The novel Celebrity brought author Thomas Thompson everything he had always chased after – money, fame, attention and a little taste of stardom. He became a celebrity himself and openly enjoyed it.

    The crowning glory for Thompson came just after his novel hit the best-sellers list in 1982, when it was bought for TV – something he had hoped for all his books. But the fortune and celebrity came too late for the tough reporter and genial giant of a man (he was 6′ 3″). By October 1982 he was dead from liver cancer at the age of 49.

    Kleber Cantrell
    Ben Masters
    McKenzie ‘Mack’ Crawford
    Joseph Bottoms
    TJ Luther
    Michael Beck
    Otto Leo
    Ned Beatty
    Assistant DA Martha Dalton
    Jennifer Warren
    DA Calvin Sledge
    Hal Holbrook
    Ceil Shannon
    Karen Austin
    Susan French
    Tess Harper
    Uncle Bun Luther
    Claude Akins
    Missy Craymore
    Dinah Manoff
    Regina Brown
    Debbie Allen
    Clifford Casey
    James Whitmore
    Mabel Hofmeyer
    Bonnie Bartlett
    Laurie Killman
    Rhonda Dotson
    Jonah Job
    Jerry Hardin
    Jeffie Crawford
    Peter Nelson
    Millie
    Anne Haney
    Arnold Beckman
    Stephen Pearlman
    Joanne
    Kelli Maroney
    Jeffie – Age 11
    River Phoenix
    The Minister
    Benjamin Leighton Armstrong
    Ruth Paine
    Nora Boland
    Art
    J.P. Bumstead
    Bud
    Ted Demers
    Sergeant Finn
    James Edgcomb
    Louie
    Howard Goodwin
    Jodie
    Gordon Haight
    Jennie
    Annie Heller-Gutwillig
    Richard
    Jay Louden
    AD
    John Morrissey
    Kate Carpenter
    Lesa Weis

    Video

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