BACKSTAIRS AT THE WHITE HOUSE (1979 - 4 DISC) CLORIS LEACHMAN

"What is heard within the walls of the White House is to be forgotten," Maggie (Olivia Cole) is instructed early in her employ. Luckily, her daughter Lillian (Leslie Uggams) ignored this directive.

Based on Lillian Rogers Parks’ best-selling memoir, My Thirty Years at the White House, this award-winning television miniseries explores the behind-the-scenes life at the White House as seen through the eyes of staffers during the course of eight different presidential administrations. Parks, who served as a seamstress, her housemaid mother and other workers that keep 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in top shape observe the terms from Taft through Eisenhower.

The stellar cast is comprised of stage and screen veterans and TV favorites. Robert Vaughn (as Woodrow Wilson), Celeste Holm (as Florence Harding), and Ed Flanders (as Calvin Coolidge), Louis Gossett Jr. as houseman Levi Mercer. Also notable are Leslie Nielsen as chief White House usher Ike Hoover, Cloris Leachman as the chilly supervising housekeeper Mrs. Jaffray, Victor Buono and Julie Harris as reluctant president William Howard Taft and his more formidable wife "Nellie," Eileen Heckart as energetic Eleanor Roosevelt, and Harry Morgan, giving 'em hell as Harry Truman. Also, Lee Grant, Bill Overton, John Randolph, Kim Hunter, Paul Winfield, Barry Sullivan, Bibi Besch, Ford Rainey, George Kennedy, Louise Latham, Andrew Duggan, Barbara Barrie, Estelle Parsons, Dana Wynter, Claire Bloom. (4-discs, 444 min, full screen)