# Beacon Hill (TV series)

Beacon Hill is a prime time period drama series which aired on CBS in 1975. Set after World War I in Boston's Beacon Hill area, the show was conceived as an Americanized version of the popular British series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–1975) and focused on the wealthy Irish-American Lassiter family and their Irish immigrant servants, who reside together on Louisburg Square.
The show was produced by Jacqueline Babbin and Beryl Vertue, the former literary agent of Upstairs, Downstairs co-creator Jean Marsh.

## Production

The first episode cost $900,000 to produce, and the music was composed by Marvin Hamlisch. Christopher Schemering of The Soap Opera Encyclopedia called Beacon Hill "the most touted prime-time soap since the Lana Turner-George Hamilton debacle The Survivors".
The series premiered on August 25, 1975, with an "impressive audience" of "43% of people watching TV" that evening, but it could not sustain those ratings. Schemering wrote that "the overly large cast and fragmented stories did not allow the audience to get its bearings." The show was cancelled after 11 weeks (two further episodes remained unaired) with its last episode airing on November 4, 1975.

## Cast and characters

The show starred Stephen Elliott as patriarch Benjamin Lassiter, a self-made businessman and éminence grise at Boston City Hall, and Nancy Marchand as his wife Mary, an elegant society woman from a wealthy family. They have five children; eldest daughter Maude (Maeve McGuire), who is married to yachting enthusiast Richard Palmer (Edward Herrmann); middle daughter Emily (DeAnn Mears), who is married to stockbroker Trevor Bullock (Roy Cooper) and is the mother of the spoilt Betsy (Linda Purl); "plain jane" Rosamond (Kitty Winn), who helps out the family business; bohemian Fawn (Kathryn Walker), who is having an affair with her Italian piano teacher Giorgio Bellonci (Michael Nouri); and Robert, the Lassiters’ only son, who has returned from France after losing an arm in World War I.
The servants consist of Arthur Hacker (George Rose), the family butler; his wife Emmeline (Beatrice Straight), the head housekeeper; his niece Maureen Mahaffey (Susan Blanchard), who works as a maid; his nephew Brian Mallory (Paul Ryan Rudd), the chauffeur who is having an affair with Rosamond; former chauffeur Harry Emmet (Barry Snider); footman Terence O'Hara (David Rounds); cook William Piper (Richard Ward) and his son Grant (Don Blakely); Marilyn Gardiner (Holland Taylor), Mary's personal assistant and secretary; and maids Eleanor (Sydney Swire) and Kate (Lisa Pelican).

## Episodes

| No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | US viewers (millions) |
| 1 | "Pilot" | Fielder Cook | Sidney Carroll | August 25, 1975 (1975-08-25) | 23.1 |
| 2 | "The Colonel and the Fawn" | Burt Brinckerhoff | Irving Gaynor Neiman | September 2, 1975 (1975-09-02) | 17.6 |
| 3 | "The Marblehead Club" | Peter Levin | David Wiltse | September 9, 1975 (1975-09-09) | 14.6 |
| 4 | "The Poor Little Thing" | Peter Levin | Story by : Sidney Carroll Teleplay by : David Wiltse | September 16, 1975 (1975-09-16) | 15.2 |
| 5 | "The Soldiers" | Peter Levin | David Wiltse | September 23, 1975 (1975-09-23) | 12.2 |
| 6 | "The Shining Example" | Peter Levin | Sidney Carroll | September 30, 1975 (1975-09-30) | 14.3 |
| 7 | "The Speakeasy" | Peter Levin | David Wiltse | October 7, 1975 (1975-10-07) | 12.7 |
| 8 | "The Million Dollar Gate" | Peter Levin | Allan Sloane | October 14, 1975 (1975-10-14) | 9.7 |
| 9 | "The Suitors" | Paul Lammers | David Wiltse | October 21, 1975 (1975-10-21) | 8.2 |
| 10 | "The Test" | Peter Levin | Story by : Sidney Carroll Teleplay by : George Baxt | October 28, 1975 (1975-10-28) | 10.8 |
| 11 | "The Pretenders" | Mel Ferber | Story by : Anne Howard Bailey Teleplay by : Irving Gaynor Neiman | November 4, 1975 (1975-11-04) | 10.5 |
| 12 | "The Debut" | unknown | unknown | unaired | unaired |
| 13 | "The Visit" | unknown | unknown | unaired | unaired |