Home Fires

Anyone under 40 might have trouble understanding how progressive the comedy-drama Room 222 (ABC, 1969-74) was on late sixties TV. Its opening titles (complete with one of TV’s loveliest musical themes) tell the story without saying a word. We see dozens of kids walking along outside an urban high school, chatting and interacting; they are an easy, natural-looking mix of faces, some white, many not. Next comes our top-billed star, an African-American man, a teacher. He smiles at the sight (who wouldn’t?) of his colleague, played by someone I’ve long considered one of TV’s most beautiful women, Denise Nicholas. What followed was a show that dealt with themes — drug addiction, homophobia — little explored on home screens then suffused with the likes of Petticoat Junction and The Brady Bunch, yet one that also made us smile as we grew to know and like the faculty and students of Walt Whitman High.

Decades later, her lead role as school counselor Liz McIntyre is probably what many people most associate with Ms. Nicholas. But her recently released book, Finding Home: A Memoir (Agate) offers a welcome opportunity to know her better. This is not your typical “and then I starred in” actor’s autobiography. Though saddled with a regrettably generic title, it’s a gracefully written, candid account of a life many of us can find relatable and sympathetic. Achieving a major breakthrough with Room 222, she strove to parlay it into film work, but her elegant beauty wasn’t cut out for the blaxploitation films of that era. (She also stayed true to her father’s stern admonition, “Do not let me walk into a movie theater and see your naked ass up on that screen.”)

As she grew older, she began to shift her interests from acting to writing, eventually publishing a critically acclaimed novel, Freshwater Road. She writes warmly of the late Carroll O’Connor, who made her his leading lady on In the Heat of the Night (NBC, CBS, 1988-95), and helped her gain multiple screenplay credits on the show. Away from the cameras, she writes frankly about three marriages that ended in divorce, and the unsolved murder of her sister.

Now in her eighties, rather than sinking into a relaxing retirement, she’s providing hands-on caregiving to her mother, more than 100 years old, who suffers from dementia. As she openly admits, she can’t afford full-time care in a place to which she could comfortably entrust a cherished family member. It’s that sort of confession that made this book resonate with me. Like most of us, Ms. Nicholas has worked hard to build a successful career and happy home life. Sometimes she’s succeeded, sometimes she hasn’t. I came away from this book feeling I’d truly gotten to know another human being better. Having long admired her work, I now add to that my respect for her humanity.