As soon as Jane Fonda read The Dollmaker in 1971, she envisioned transforming the novel into a film with herself as Gertie Nevels. In 1979, ABCTV agreed to such an undertaking which finally came to realization in 1984. The television movie, adapted from the novel by Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn and directed by Daniel Petrie, featured Fonda in the leading role, along with Levon Helm as Clovis and several talented youngsters from Tennessee as their children. The scenes set in Appalachia were shot on location in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee while an abandoned steel mill in Chicago doubled for the factory and housing project in Detroit. Aired on May 13, 1984, the television production was highly praised for its excellent performances, fine photography, and appropriate soundtrack of traditional mountain music. Some reviewers, however, were disturbed by what they felt was an excessive emphasis on reproducing the peculiarities of mountain speech and...