The Murder of Mary Phagan

The Murder of Mary Phagan is a 1988 American two-part television miniseries starring Jack Lemmon about the murder of a 13-year-old factory worker and the subsequent trial of her accused murderer Leo Frank. The supporting cast features Richard Jordan, Robert Prosky, Peter Gallagher, Kathryn Walker, Rebecca Miller, Paul Dooley, Charles Dutton, Kevin Spacey, Cynthia Nixon, Dylan Baker and William H. Macy. Summary Dramatizing the true story of Leo Frank, a factory manager who was convicted of the murder a 13-year-old girl, a factory worker named Mary Phagan, in Atlanta in 1913. His trial was sensational and controversial, and at its end, Frank was convicted of murdering Mary Phagan and sentenced to death by hanging. After Frank's legal appeals failed, the governor of Georgia commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment on June 21, 1915, destroying his own career in the process. On the morning of August 17, 1915 Frank was kidnapped from prison and lynched by a small group of prominent men from Marietta, Georgia, Mary Phagan's home town. Production Written by Larry McMurtry, produced by George Stevens Jr., and directed by William "Billy" Hale, the miniseries stars Lemmon and features Kevin Spacey, Rebecca Miller, Peter Gallagher, Charles Dutton, Richard Jordan, Cynthia Nixon, Dylan Baker and William H. Macy. Lemmon noted during a publicity appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson shortly before the miniseries was broadcast, that the cast was the best with which he had ever worked. William H. Macy, at the beginning of his career, was referred to on the set as "Bill Macy" and billed as "W.H. Macy".