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When we returned from Lawrence, Paul Cowan and I were very excited about what had happened. We talked about, “This would be a wonderful subject for a t.v. mini-series. So [tape stops and starts].

Q:

Go ahead.

Foner:

So Paul and I talked about this. I said I would call Ernest Kinoy. Ernie Kinoy, Arthur's brother, is a writer for television. He wrote many of the major t.v. documentaries, I don't know what you call them. All kinds of things. “Roots,” he did a number of the Roots things. He's won all kinds of awards. He's really very very good. I asked him about it. He said that he would let me know when Stan Margulies would be coming to New York. Stan Margulies was the producer of “Roots” and a whole stack of these week long series, and has worked with Ernie on a number of projects. Then Ernie called and said, “He's in town,” I should call him.

Paul and I went. We set up an appointment and we had breakfast with him. We played out the idea based upon the Lawrence strike. Paul indicated he'd done some thinking about the kind of, how he might dramatize it with a “Rich Man, Poor Man” kind of thing, with the daughter of one of the mill owners becoming interested in it and about falling in love with somebody. You know, very exciting kind of thing. [laughs] I also had indicated to him that Jane Fonda had mentioned to me that she was looking for a t.v mini-series, you know, one of these projects, and I obviously did not know but she might become interested in a thing like on the Lawrence Strike. He said, “Well, give me all the things you have and let me take it back. Let me look it over, and let me think about it. About six weeks later I got a call from him, saying that “It's very exciting but there's no way that anybody could be expected to buy time on this project.” So he wanted to know if he could keep the material. So I sent him a bill and -- no [laughs], that was that.

Then the next thing that happened was when they were filming “Ragtime,” [Ed] Doctorow called me one day and he said, “Moe, do you have good photographs of the mills of Lawrence, what they looked like from the outside and inside?” I said, “Well, here's a book and we also made a film strip, a tape. Everything in there is exactly the way it was then, because the mills are empty.” He said, “I'm trying to convince Milos Forman to include a segment on the Lawrence Strike in the film, because it's in the book.” I told him that the filming would be very, you know, everything exists there. I said, “Not only that but the city would go all out, and give you complete cooperation -- everybody.” So he said, “Okay, good. Tomorrow I'm going to get





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