The 1980 CBS television film Angel City was already an unusually grounded production: filming took place in June 1980 at the actual migrant labor camp in Homestead, Florida, where author Patrick D. Smith had once worked. But roughly two weeks into production, the film’s original director, Steve Carver, was replaced by Philip Leacock, turning a socially conscious drama about forced labor into the setting for a behind-the-scenes clash. Carver later alleged that star Ralph Waite arrived on set drunk and that he told producers Waite had to be removed or Carver would walk. According to Carver, the producers refused because they could not—or would not—dismiss Waite, who was the film’s leading actor and had already worked with Leacock on The Waltons. Carver said he then quit and was blackballed, claiming the incident damaged his career. The production continued under Leacock and aired on CBS on November 12, 1980, but the competing accounts leave the precise circumstances of the dispute dependent on Carver’s retrospective allegation rather than independently established evidence.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
The Drunken Set Dispute That Replaced Angel City’s Director
Angel City / 1980s
The 1980 CBS television film Angel City was already an unusually grounded production: filming took place in June 1980 at the actual migrant labor camp in Homestead, Florida, where author Patrick D. Smith had once worked. But roughly two weeks into production, the film’s original director, Steve Carver, was replaced by Philip Leacock, turning a socially conscious drama about forced labor into the setting for a behind-the-scenes clash. Carver later alleged that star Ralph Waite arrived on set drunk and that he told producers Waite had to be removed or Carver would walk. According to Carver, the producers refused because they could not—or would not—dismiss Waite, who was the film’s leading actor and had already worked with Leacock on The Waltons. Carver said he then quit and was blackballed, claiming the incident damaged his career. The production continued under Leacock and aired on CBS on November 12, 1980, but the competing accounts leave the precise circumstances of the dispute dependent on Carver’s retrospective allegation rather than independently established evidence.
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