Lime Street TV series
starring RJ Wagner and Samantha Smith
The production of the Lime Street TV series pilot was slated to begin in the spring of 1985. Hundreds of kids auditioned for the parts of Elizabeth and Margaret Ann, daughters of James Greyson Culver, a “globetrotting” insurance investigator played by RJ Wagner. Maia Brewton, an 8-year old who had previously appeared in Trapper John, M.D., General Hospital and Back to the Future, was eventually cast as Culver’s daughter Margaret Ann. Yet in the early winter of 1985 there still was no actress for the role of Culver’s oldest daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s character was described as “an old-fashioned kind of girl, nothing Cyndi Lauperish, who is polite, well-read and aware of something in the world besides MTV.” One evening Harry Thomason’s brother Danny, an optometrist in Little Rock, Arkansas ended the search. Having seen Samantha on the Tonight Show, he immediately called Harry, “Here is a little girl you should look at.”
When producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason reached the 12-year old at her Maine home, Samantha was unsure if she would be able to come out to audition any time soon - her dog Kim had just had puppies.
“That is exactly what we wanted, that kind of quality,” Bloodworth-Thomason commented years later. They immediately fell in love with her.
Starring Robert Wagner as James Greyson Culver, a Virginia horse farmer who also investigated insurance fraud for a British insurance company. Samantha Smith was cast as Culver's daughter Elizabeth, and Maia Brewton as her little sister Margaret Ann. The show began filming in May of 1985. A series had a tragic reason for leaving the air after Samantha's death on August 25, 1985.
For more photographs from the set of "Lime Street" visit www.robert-wagner.com
More info on the show can be found on TV.com and IMDB.