Centennial
Chapter Three - The Wagon and the Elephant
Aired October 28, 1978
NBC Television Network

Levi Zendt... Gregory Harrison
Elly Zamm... Stephanie Zimbalist
Oliver Seccombe... Timothy Dalton
Maxwell Mercy... Chad Everett
Lisette Mercy Pasquinel... Karen Clarkson
Alexander McKeag... Richard Chamberlain
Clay Basket... Barbara Carrera
Lucinda McKeag Zendt... Christina Raines

Director... Paul Krasny
Producer... Malcolm R. Harding
Teleplay... Jerry Ziegman
Photography... Duke Callaghanl
Editor... Robert F. Shugrue
Music... John Addison
Art Directors... Mark W. Mansbridge, Sherman Loudermilk, Lou Montejano and Seymour Klate
Production Design... Jack Senter

An epic mini-series about the making of America - the most ambitious project ever filmed for television - this filming of James Michener's 1,100-page saga that spanned the decades from the late eighteenth century to the present ended up as a 26 1/2 hour movie irregularly scheduled over four months and molded into nine self-contained TV movies, each of which could be shown later independently of the others.  Heralded in network publicity as "a story of reckless daring and reckless loving, of struggle and pain, of laughter and triumph; it's the story of the land, and the people who turned it into a nation," Centennial not only was (and is) the most expensive film ever made for television - its $25 million budget was four times that of Roots - but had the biggest "name" cast ever assembled for a dramatic presentation, with David Janssen tying the whole project together as the overall narrator and star of the final "chapter" as the current day descendant of those who founded the fictional town of Centennial, Colorado.  Centennial received Emmy Award nominations for Film Editing (Chapter One) and Art Direction/Set Direction (Chapter Seven).