Lorrie Morgan Ventures Into TV With `Proudheart'

Some critic is bound to say country-music songbird Lorrie Morgan was typecast in "Proudheart," The Nashville Network's first foray into TV drama tonight. And they might be right. But that takes nothing away from Morgan's down-home if soft-pedaled performance, the first of what she says she hopes will be many.

Oh, her solid-gold LP "Watch Me," out nearly a year now, and the platinum "Something In Red," still charting after more than two years, remain the bread and butter at this point. But Morgan is deliberately branching out.

"We looked so long for the right thing for me," she says. "This story was written with me in mind, and I'll tell you - it was one of the most draining emotional things I've ever done in my life."

That's some confession from a woman around whom more than one headline has been written, most recently about her relationship with Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, but most notably about the alcohol-induced death of her second husband, country star-on-the-rise Keith Whitley.

"Collin (Wilcox-Paxton, a film and TV veteran who plays Morgan's mother) brought those emotions out in me. . . . We talked a lot about Keith, and she just told me to try to think about the saddest thing I could imagine.

"I pulled everything up from the depths, and then when it was over, I went to the bus and slept for two hours."

The "Proudheart" story is a simple one about family loyalty, hard times, good friends and three generations of strange but strong women.

"Oh, yes, this is very real, and women will relate to it," Morgan says over the sound of - what is that? - splashing water?

"You'll have to forgive me, but we're on a tight schedule here this morning, and I'm just takin' a bath while we talk, if that's OK with you."

In "Proudheart," Morgan's character, Sam Farmer, is summoned home for her father's funeral. There she discovers that her dad's business also is on its last leg, and she sets out to prove to hometown neighbors that she can save her the debt-ridden gas station. There also is a bit of romance, a strong-but-strange teen-age daughter (played to the hilt by Nancy Moore Atchison) and, of course, songs.

Two tunes were written into the script, one of them a lullaby, which Morgan sings a cappella to her fictional daughter; the other she performs during a dance-hall scene.

The story is thin, as might be expected of any one-hour drama, but it's a story everybody knows. Morgan confesses that the budget was tight "because we wanted to see how I'd be."

She's pretty convincing, albeit in a role that's not much of a stretch. But Morgan's performance is dead on in scenes with her daughter, in those where she perfectly thwarts unwelcome advances, and in the climactic one with her nutty mom. All will hit a lot of viewers where they live.

"I don't think anybody could ask for more from a first or even a second effort," she says.

Agreed.