Anna Sandor obit

Anna Sandor, ‘Hangin’ In’ and ‘Miss Rose White’ TV Writer, Dies at 76

The Emmy nominee and three-time Humanitas Prize winner came from Budapest and Toronto to also pen ‘Charlie Grant’s War’ and ‘Tarzan in Manhattan.’ 

She was not on the list.

Anna Sandor, who co-created the long-running CBC series Hangin’ In and earned an Emmy nomination for writing the lauded 1992 NBC telefilm Miss Rose White, starring Kyra Sedgwick and Amanda Plummer, has died. She was 76.

Sandor died Nov. 1 of complications from melanoma at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, California, her family announced.

“She was spunky and she was sharp,” her daughter, Rachel Sandor Stone, said. “She was strong-willed, warm and kind, but unfiltered. And she was selfless. One of the last things she said to the palliative care team before she passed was that everyone has a story; the vp of a bank and a homeless person both have stories worth learning.”

Hangin’ In, the CBC dramedy that starred Lally Cadeau as a social worker counseling teenagers, was a rare TV series created by a woman at the time (Sandor shared credit with Jack Humphrey and Joe Partington). The show aired for seven seasons (1981-87) and boasted the first onscreen credit for a young actor named Keanu Reeves.

Sandor would move away from the series format, and for her first movie script, the 1984 CBC telefilm Charlie Grant’s War, she spent months researching the true story of a Vancouver diamond broker who forged paperwork to help Jews escape Nazi-occupied Vienna.

“Charlie Grant’s War packs an emotional wallop that will stay with you for some time,” wrote Jim Bawden in the Toronto Star. “It’s the best Canadian TV drama in some time, an almost perfectly realized blend of fine script, direction and skilled acting.” She won an ACTRA award for that.

Sandor continued to write TV movies in Canada before being lured to Hollywood, and she and then-husband William Gough teamed on Tarzan in Manhattan, a 1989 CBS film directed by Michael Schultz that starred Joe Lara and put a modern-day spin on the Edgar Rice Burroughs character.

Miss Rose White, based on the Barbara Lebow play, centered on two sisters (Sedgwick and Plummer) reckoning with their divergent experiences during World War II. In the Boston Globe, John Koch wrote that “out of pain and guilt and thorny evasions, Miss Rose White weaves something true, deeply felt and touching.”

It won the Emmy for outstanding made for television movie, and in addition to her Emmy nom, Sandor was nominated for a WGA award and landed her first Humanitas Prize.

Sandor was born in Budapest, Hungary on March 4, 1949, to Holocaust survivors Agnes and Paul Sandor. Her father died when she was 5.

In 1956, she and her mother, aunt and cousin fled as the Soviet Union violently suppressed the Hungarian Revolution. Before escaping, she and her mom witnessed neighbors being shot by Soviet troops and hid in a building troops had set on fire.

Entering Austria using forged documents, Agnes and Anna briefly lived in Switzerland, France and England, where they learned English. They eventually emigrated to Toronto, where mom eventually managed a bridal store and shared Hungarian recipes in a newspaper column.

“I lived with the specter of what my parents had gone through, of my mother escaping a camp,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. “I was [very young] when I left, but the memories were strong. In Canada, I began to feel Jewish. I began to make discoveries about myself and my background.”

Sandor was a voracious reader who regularly went to the theater and the movies (Montgomery Clift was a particular favorite), and that inspired her to create stories and fantasy worlds.

Enrolling in Harvard Collegiate Institute for high school, she took drama classes and was accepted at the University of Windsor, where she was in the first class of the university’s School of Dramatic Art, graduating in 1971 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

She acted in productions around Ontario, taught theater workshops for children and wrote poetry to pass the time. In 1975, her compositions caught the attention of actor-screenwriter Louis Del Grande, who convinced Sandor her talents were better utilized in the writers room than on the stage.

She discovered he was right. “I’m a very active person,” she told the Windsor Star in 1986. “I just go nuts when I can’t make things happen. Acting in a way is a very passive profession. In writing, you can generate your own stuff.”

When Del Grande was hired to be the head writer for King of Kensington, a CBC sitcom about a shopkeeper who acts as a fixer for the residents of the multicultural neighborhood in Toronto, he brought Sandor to the writing staff. The show was a hit, running from 1975-80 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 ACTRA-nominated episode of the comedy-mystery series Seeing Things and a short story — “An Evening at the Opera” — that was included in Fingerprints, an anthology of Canadian crime writing.

In addition to Miss Rose White, Sandor received Humanitas prizes for her work on the children’s films My Louisiana Sky and Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front in 2002 and 2007, respectively.

She also wrote Accidental Friendship, a 2008 Hallmark Channel movie starring Chandra Wilson as an unhoused woman who forms a bond with a police officer.

Sandor moved to Colorado in 1995 before coming back to Los Angeles in 2003, eventually relocating to San Diego in 2017 to be closer to her daughter’s family. She returned to acting, performing at the Point Loma Playhouse and the OnStage Playhouse in Chula Vista, California.

She also wrote Knock Loudly!, a story of a lonely former movie star that debuted at OnStage in April.

In addition to her daughter, survivors include her son-in-law, Adam; her granddaughters, Dani and Gabi; and her Bichon Maltese mix, Teddy. She and Gough divorced in 1996. (Her family would also like to thank friend Tim Ryan, who helped them with this obituary.)

A celebration of life will take place Dec. 6 in San Diego. Donations in her memory can be made to the OnStage Playhouse.

Writer

Shannen Doherty and Kavan Smith in Growing the Big One (2010)

Growing the Big One

6.3

TV Movie

teleplay

2010

 

A Kiss at Midnight (2008)

A Kiss at Midnight

6.2

TV Movie

written by

2008

 

Chandra Wilson in Accidental Friendship (2008)

Accidental Friendship

6.7

TV Movie

written by

2008

 

Just Breathe (2008)

Just Breathe

5.7

TV Movie

storyteleplay

2008

 

Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front (2006)

Molly: An American Girl on the Home Front

6.6

TV Movie

teleplay

2006

 

Felicity: An American Girl Adventure (2005)

Felicity: An American Girl Adventure

6.6

TV Movie

teleplay

2005

 

Bill Pullman and Hayden Panettiere in Tiger Cruise (2004)

Tiger Cruise

5.8

TV Movie

written by

2004

 

My Louisiana Sky (2001)

My Louisiana Sky

6.9

TV Movie

teleplay

2001

 

Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story (1999)

Gift of Love: The Daniel Huffman Story

6.2

TV Movie

written by

1999

 

Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight (1994)

Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight

6.0

TV Movie

written by

1994

 

For the Love of My Child: The Anissa Ayala Story (1993)

For the Love of My Child: The Anissa Ayala Story

5.9

TV Movie

written by

1993

 

Patty Duke and Melissa Gilbert in Family of Strangers (1993)

Family of Strangers

6.2

TV Movie

written by

1993

 

Kyra Sedgwick and Maureen Stapleton in Miss Rose White (1992)

Miss Rose White

6.9

TV Movie

teleplay

1992

 

Tarzán (1991)

Tarzán

5.6

TV Series

Writer

1991–1992

4 episodes

 

Elliott Gould and Valerie Harper in Stolen: One Husband (1990)

Stolen: One Husband

5.5

TV Movie

written by

1990

 

Producer

Tarzán (1991)

Tarzán

5.6

TV Series

creative producer

1991–1992

12 episodes

 

Additional Crew

Louis Del Grande in Seeing Things (1981)

Seeing Things

7.8

TV Series

story consultant

1986

3 episodes

 

King of Kensington (1975)

King of Kensington

7.4

TV Series

story consultant

1979

1 episode