Hallmark Hall of Fame - Season 58

First aired: 12/7/2008 3 episodes

Episodes

1. Front of the Class

Aired: 12/7/2008

The story of a young man who overcomes the odds and being diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome to become a teacher.

2. Loving Leah

Aired: 1/25/2009

Loving Leah is a television movie that aired on CBS as a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on January 25, 2009. The film is directed by Jeff Bleckner and stars Adam Kaufman as an unobservant Jewish bachelor who feels compelled to marry his observant rabbi brother's widow, Leah to honor him via the ancient Jewish custom of yibbum. Loving Leah began as a play by Pnenah Goldstein and was brought to Hallmark by Ricki Lake, who also appears in a minor role in the film. Goldstein also wrote the screenplay and "saw it in a way like Moonstruck or Crossing Delancey. To prepare for her role of widow in the Hasidic community, lead actress Lauren Ambrose spent time with women of the close-knit community.

3. The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

Aired: 4/19/2009

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler is a 2009 television film directed by John Kent Harrison. The film is a co-production between United States and Poland companies. The teleplay by Harrison and Lawrence John Spagnola, based on the 2005 biography The Mother of the Holocaust Children by Anna Mieszkowska, focuses on Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children to safety during World War II. The Hallmark Hall of Fame production, which was filmed on location in Riga, Latvia, was broadcast by CBS on April 19, 2009, and released to DVD in Hallmark Gold Crown stores in early June of that year.