John Cullum

But it wasn't really my job on Northern Exposer to do that.

And I really loved the fact that I got to meet all of these incredible directors and And all these writers and the actors coming in with John Cullum and all those guys who bring all of that history with them.

And I got to meet you guys, too.

I don't think people realize how crucial it is, the decoration of a set, because we have to suspend our disbelief as actors.

But every single channel, every single ABC affiliate across the country, all broadcast ABC's own introduction.

And that was a short statement recorded by the actor John Cullum, who plays the farmer Jim Dahlberg in the film.

As with the segment we saw from Como TV in Seattle, he too speaks to us from a cosy domestic setting.

He's not in a studio behind a desk or at a podium.

Even though, of course, we can assume many viewers didn't have the luxury of a cosy sitting room lined with books and lit with warm lamps ensconced on fancy side tables, nonetheless, here is the domestic ideal which we must defend, which the commies would seek to destroy.

It's a bit like the recruitment posters for soldiers during the First World War, which portrayed a beautiful, idealised rural Britain, which many young men in 1914 who were slogging away in dark, satanic mills would never have laid eyes on, but were being asked to defend it and treasure it nonetheless.

Hello, I'm John Cullum.

In this evening's ABC Theater presentation of The Day After, I play a father in a typical American family who experienced the catastrophic events of a full-scale nuclear war.

Woo.

Na- [laughs] Natalie, set during the American Civil War, what is the family name in the 1965 film Shenandoah starring Jimmy Stewart, and in the subsequent Tony Award-winning musical Shenandoah starring John Cullum?

I'm gonna try Anderson.

Anderson is correct.

And, you know, so here we are and looking back at that and going, "Wow." Yes.

The, my real memories are really feeling a part of the co- I feel, and to this day, you know, John Cullum ended up working with my wife Mare, and I f- you know, all, uh, like, there, there's ...

But that time, like, doing that silly things like going to a Mariners game and throwing out the first pitch with you guys.

I missed that too.

That's for sure.

Now, the chemistry between you and Rob Morrow, who played Joel Fleischman, that antagonism was a major part of the show's success, and there was also the chemistry between you and John Cullum, who played Holling.

You and John created that sense of deep, lifelong, complicated brotherhood.

What was the dynamic between you and those actors off-camera?