The Movie is Out

Copyright 1997 Boston Herald Inc.
The Boston Herald

Television; Inside the abuse cycle; Story of 'Mother's Murder' drawn from true '94 case
BYLINE: By BART MILLS

Just a few months before Nicole Brown Simpson was found stabbed to death in Los Angeles, New York newspaper heiress Anne Scripps Douglas was found bludgeoned with a hammer in 1994. She lingered in a coma for a week before dying.

The presumed murderer of Mrs. Douglas, her estranged husband, a man with a record of beating her, fled in his BMW. The car was later found idling and abandoned on a bridge. Three months later, his body washed up downriver. "Battered wives often follow a pattern," said Roxanne Hart, the ex-"Chicago Hope" actress who plays Anne Scripps Douglas in "Our Mother's Murder," a USA movie airing tonight at 9. "If the husband or boyfriend is nice 25 percent of the time, the women think the nice moments are the reality and the terrible 75 percent is the aberration. They're unable to extricate themselves from the relationship because they deny, deny, deny.

"The first time this man (Scott Douglas, played by James Wilder) hit Anne Scripps, he begged for her forgiveness," she continued. "She believed his promise that he'd never do it again and she took him back. Of course, he beat her again. He beat her for a long, long time. When she finally made a move to divorce him, her lawyers told her she had to try to reconcile with him if she wanted to get custody of their child. That's when he killed her."

Before she took the part, Hart sought assurances from the producers that the film would explore how Scripps became ensnared in a cycle of domestic violence. "I think we get the sense of a journey because the story is seen through the eyes of the woman's teenage daughters from her previous marriage. Despite the violence that's shown, the result is not just a slasher film," she said.

Hart is resigned to the showbiz necessity of playing women who have trouble with men. On "Chicago Hope," she and her TV husband (Adam Arkin) split, leaving her character so little to do the producers finally wrote her out a year ago. In "When Secrets Kill," an ABC film last May, she suffered from a cheating husband and was falsely accused of murder.

"It's a fact that a lot of times you have to play victims. It isn't often you get to play powerful, uncompromised women," she said.

Hart gets to show more of an edge in her next role, as the overbearing daughter of Hume Cronyn in Showtime's "Alone," scheduled in December.

The aqua-eyed, strawberry-blonde Hart, 44, is happily married to actor Philip Casnoff, and they have two children, Alexander, 9, and Macklin, 3.

Hart is teaching her own kids not to settle disputes with their fists. "We've told Alexander he's not allowed to hit," she said. "He's become a great arguer. He's a little lawyer. He's very volatile verbally. Now Macklin, he likes to run into Alexander like a little battering ram. I guess he needs some work."

"My Mother's Murder" airs tonight at 9 on USA.

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