Anna Sandor, who co-created the long-running CBC series Hang and earned an Emmy nomination for writing the popular 1992 NBC TV movie. Miss Rose Whitewith Kyra Sedgwick and Amanda Plummer, has died. She was 76 years old.
Sandor died Nov. 1 of complications from melanoma at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., her family said.
“She was brave and smart,” said her daughter, Rachel Sandor Stone. “She was strong-willed and warm and kind, but unfiltered. And she was selfless. One of the last things she said to the hospice team before she passed away was that everyone has a story; a bank vice president and a homeless man both have stories worth learning.”
Hangthe CBC comedy-drama starring Lally Cadeau as a social worker counseling teenagers, was a rare television series created by a woman at the time (Sandor shared the credit with Jack Humphrey and Joe Partington). The show aired for seven seasons (1981-87) and featured the first on-screen credit for a young actor named Keanu Reeves.
Sandor would move away from the serial format and, for his first film script, the 1984 CBC television film Charlie Grant’s Warshe spent months researching the true story of a Vancouver diamond broker who forged documents to help Jews escape Nazi-occupied Vienna.
“Charlie Grant’s War contains an emotional punch that will stay with you for a while,” wrote Jim Bawden in the Toronto Star. “This is the best Canadian television series in a long time, an almost perfectly executed blend of good script, direction and talented acting. » She won an ACTRA award for this.
Sandor continued to write TV films in Canada before being lured to Hollywood, and she and her then-husband, William Gough, teamed up on Tarzan in Manhattana 1989 CBS film directed by Michael Schultz that starred Joe Lara and gave a modern twist to the character of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Miss Rose Whitebased on the play by Barbara Lebow, centering on two sisters (Sedgwick and Plummer) confronting their divergent experiences during World War II. In the Boston GlobeJohn Koch wrote that “through pain, through guilt, and through thorny evasions, Miss Rose White weaves something true, deeply felt and touching.
It won the Emmy for Outstanding Television Movie, and in addition to her Emmy nomination, Sandor was nominated for a WGA Award and nabbed her first Humanitas Award.
Sandor was born in Budapest, Hungary on March 4, 1949, to Holocaust survivors Agnes and Paul Sandor. Her father died when she was 5 years old.
In 1956, she and her mother, aunt and cousin fled as the Soviet Union violently suppressed the Hungarian revolution. Before fleeing, she and her mother saw their neighbors being shot by Soviet troops and hiding in a building that the troops had burned down.
Entering Austria with false documents, Agnès and Anna lived briefly in Switzerland, France and England, where they learned English. They eventually emigrated to Toronto, where their mother eventually managed a bridal store and shared Hungarian recipes in a newspaper column.
“I lived with the specter of what my parents had experienced, of my mother escaping from a camp,” she told the newspaper. Los Angeles Times in 1992. “I was [very young] when I left, but the memories were strong. In Canada, I started to feel Jewish. I began to make discoveries about myself and my journey.
Sandor was a voracious reader who regularly went to the theater and cinema (Montgomery Clift was a particular favorite), which inspired her to create fantastical stories and worlds.
Enrolled at Harvard Collegiate Institute for her high school studies, she took drama classes and was accepted to the University of Windsor, where she was part of the first class of the university’s School of Drama, where she graduated in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts.
She has performed in productions across Ontario, taught children’s theater workshops and written poetry to pass the time. In 1975, his compositions caught the attention of actor and screenwriter Louis Del Grande, who convinced Sandor that his talents were better used in the writers’ room than on stage.
She found out he was right. “I’m a very active person,” she told the Star of Windsor in 1986. “I go crazy when I can’t make things happen. Acting in one way or another is a very passive profession. By writing you can generate your own stuff.”
When Del Grande was hired to be the editor-in-chief of King of Kensingtona CBC sitcom about a shopkeeper who acts as a fixer for the residents of a multicultural Toronto neighborhood, he brought Sandor to the writing team. The show was a success, running from 1975 to 1980 and featuring early career performances from Eugene Levy, John Candy and Mike Myers.
Sandor met Gough when the producer hired her to write the script for an episode of the CBC docudrama series. For the record. They married in 1982 and collaborated on an episode of the ACTRA-nominated crime comedy series. see things and a short story – “An Evening at the Opera” – which was included in Fingerprintsan anthology of Canadian detective literature.
In addition to Miss Rose WhiteSandor received Humanitas awards for his work on children’s films My Louisiana sky And Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front in 2002 and 2007 respectively.
She also wrote Accidental friendshipa 2008 Hallmark Channel film starring Chandra Wilson as an unhoused woman who forms a bond with a police officer.
Sandor moved to Colorado in 1995 before returning to Los Angeles in 2003, eventually moving to San Diego in 2017 to be closer to her daughter’s family. She returned to theater, performing at the Point Loma Playhouse and the OnStage Playhouse in Chula Vista, California.
She also wrote Hit hard!the story of a reclusive former movie star who debuted on OnStage in April.
In addition to her daughter, survivors include her son-in-law, Adam; his granddaughters, Dani and Gabi; and his Bichon Maltese mix, Teddy. She and Gough divorced in 1996.
A celebration of life will be held December 6 in San Diego. Donations in his memory can be made to the OnStage Playhouse.
