Trivia for
"North and South" (1985)

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• Cost $25 million to make.
  
  
• Took more than two year to make and involved -8,700 pieces of wardrobe (lead actresses each wore 28-35 different costumes) -940 scenes -540 page teleplay
  
  
• It took over two years to film 940 scenes out of a script of 540 pages.
  
  

• Since West Point today bears little physical resemblance to the Academy of 1842, the West Point scenes were filmed at Historic Jefferson College outside Natchez. Local military school cadets and ROTC students served as their 19th Century counter parts and were even granted permission to grow their hair for six months to insure the proper period look.
  
  
• Living history groups with the special expertise to recreate the Mexican-American War battle of Churubusco (1847), filmed the battle in a field near Natchez, Mississippi. In mid-May, 1984, fourteen re-enactor units from a dozen states took a week's vacation from their regular jobs to stage what was to be the largest authentic encampment of Mexican War re-enactors ever held. More than 140 strong, they arrived at their own expense, bringing their own (and for the most part hand-made) period-correct uniforms, hand weapons and artillery, caissons, limbers, battery wagons, field ambulances, tenting and camping equipment. The production company provided water, hay, feed and straw for horses, reimbursement for powder, and made donations to each of the participating units.
  
  
• Where the historic structures were correct but the furnishings were not, or where priceless antiques were so fragile they could not be used, the company brought in their own pieces, such as the bronze and marble statuary valued at more than $200,000 that decorated the house used for the New Orleans bordello run by the flamboyant Madam Conti (Elizabeth Taylor).
  
  
• With the exception of military or servants garb, none of the main characters wear the same thing twice in the miniseries, except for Ashton who wears a purple dress for when she arrives, and departs Mount Royal.
  
  
• Some of the 3,300 costumes were taken from storage at the Burbank Studios and Hollywood costume houses. One young extra even found a name tape marked "Mickey Rooney" sewn into his coat.
  
  
• All Saints Chapel (the chapel ruins where Madeline and Orry met for secret trysts) was a built set.
  
  
• Philip Casnoff was nearly passed over for the role of Elkanah Bent because the producers thought he was "too short". Casnoff won them over when he did a practice scene in which he slammed another actor against a wall and yelled at him viciously. Casnoff noted that to do that audition, he summoned his feelings of rage from being recently mugged in a parking lot.
  
  
• The scenes which were filmed in downtown Charleston required very little set preparation... with one exception... truck loads of dirt had to be brought in to cover the cement-paved streets.
  
  
• In the publicity shot of George and Orry in uniform that is used as the main art work for the DVD collection, one of the flags behind them is a US flag while the other is a Texas flag. The photo was taken during the filming of the Churubusco scenes, and the only flags available on set were the US and Texas flags.
  
  
• The exterior shots of Mont Royal were taken at the mansion Boone Hall, while the interior were taken at another mansion, Stanton Hall.
  
  
• According to an extra from the Book Two movie, the big Manassas scene where you see pandemonium among both the soldiers and the crowd, the wide angle shot was not staged - there was real panic. Something had gone wrong, a gun went off when it wasn't suppose to, somebody else ran a direction they weren't suppose and really caused a stir.
  
  
• James Read's great-great-uncle, Sebaldus Hassler, fought and died with the Union Army, falling in battle at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 20, 1863. Read's great-great-grandfather, Sampson T. Groves, served in the First Ohio Volunteer Heavy Artillery until his honorable discharge on July 25, 1865, after which he lived to a ripe old age.
  
  
• In preparation for the role of George Hazard, James Read spent several weeks at Patrick Swayze's horse ranch where Swayze taught Read how to ride horse back.
  
  

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