Request Granted : Story of Help-Induced Suicide Comes to ABC in Betty Rollin's 'Last Wish'

By SUSAN KING

Jan. 12, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

“Next to your happiness, I want to die more than anything in the world”

--Ida Rollin

In 1983, TV correspondent and best-selling author Betty Rollin helped her mother commit suicide.

For two years, Rollin, an only child, watched the once-vivacious 75-year-old Ida Rollin suffer with ovarian cancer. Mrs. Rollin endured two bouts of chemotherapy treatment during which time she lost her hair, couldn’t eat because of intestinal blockage and lost control of her bowels. The doctors gave her six months to live.

Fearful of a long, slow, painful death, Mrs. Rollin felt trapped. She wanted a way out. She wanted to die with dignity. So Rollin and her husband, Dr. Harold “Ed” Edwards, began calling doctors to discover what kind of pills would enable her mother to achieve her last wish.

The official cause of Ida Rollin’s death in October, 1983, was ovarian cancer. But two years later, Rollin wrote that her mother died after swallowing a sedative and a depressive with club soda. The story was told in “Last Wish,” Rollin’s best-selling account of her mother’s illness.

This week Oscar-winners Patty Duke and Maureen Stapleton star as Betty and Ida in ABC’s adaptation of Rollin’s controversial book.

When Rollin saw the completed film, she cried from the beginning until the closing credits. “It was very moving for me not because it is sad, but for really very different reasons,” she said. “It just makes me miss my mother. Though Maureen doesn’t look anything like my mother, my mother is there. The little spirit of my mother is in this performance.”

“Last Wish” marks the second time Rollin, who is a contributing correspondent for NBC, has seen her life portrayed on the small screen. Mary Tyler Moore played her in the acclaimed 1978 movie, “First, You Cry,” based on Rollin’s book about her 1975 mastectomy. Because she had a very good experience with that movie, Rollin was willing to have this extremely personal story made into a film.

“To tell you the truth, I felt proud of my mother,” she explained. “I felt proud of the book and I felt proud of the message.”

Rollin said “Last Wish” is a story of triumph.

“It’s about a woman who had a very strong personality and got out of life on her own terms,” she said. “There are a lot of people in my mother’s shoes who are at the end of life and feel trapped and have no way to get out. My mother was lucky. She had us. But I hope this movie will make people aware of all of those people who perhaps don’t have anybody and who are desperate to get out of life and need help.”

Rollin believes her mother would have preferred a physician-assisted suicide, had euthanasia been legal. “As a result of (my) experience, I really feel strongly that it is the compassionate and sensible way to go,” Rollin said.

“If my mother knew that at the moment she wanted to, she could ask a doctor to help her out of life, she wouldn’t have taken the route she did,” Rollin said. “She had to be able to swallow and at the moment, she could. She felt, ‘God, I better do this now because I may not be able to swallow next week.’ The irony, which was not lost on her, which she said herself, ‘You have to feel well in order to die.’ ”

Rollin said she is not recommending what she and her husband were forced to do. “I think there has to be another way,” she said. “I think that my mother’s story shows what is needed.”

She admitted she was afraid of legal ramifications when the book was published. “I am not (anymore) because the statute of limitations are over for second-degree manslaughter,” she said. “I showed a lawyer the manuscript before it was published. I didn’t want to be a martyr. I thought there would be a small chance I would be prosecuted, but not a big one. Technically speaking, my mother committed suicide and my help was indirect.”

In the past eight years, Rollin said, people’s perception of suicide in terminal cases has changed with the suicide machine of Jack Kevorkian, the so-called “Dr. Death,” and the enormous success of Derek Humphry’s suicide how-to book, “Final Exit,” for which Rollin wrote the introduction.

“They are buying ‘Final Exit’ for insurance,” Rollin said. “That’s a book that tells you how to die safely if you are in a situation like my mother was. I feel they should have that information I wish I had had.”

“Last Wish” was originally optioned by Goldie Hawn for a feature film. At least one studio passed on the book because of the dark subject.

“We were always interested in it,” said Joan Barnett, the film’s executive producer with her partner Jack Grossbart. “There was a bit of a bidding war around town, a lot of companies were interested in it and we persevered.”

Rollin worked very closely with the producers and writer Jerome Kass (“Queen of the Stardust Ballroom”).

“I knew Betty personally,” Kass said. “I had heard about the book when it first came out and I was sort of frightened to read it. There are people now who are frightened to see the movie. It seems like it would be a very depressing story, so I read it and I wept from the first page to the last. I was so moved by the story and the strength of the woman and by the strength of Betty, when I was asked if I would do it I said yes instantly.”

Kass said he believes “Last Wish” will spark discussion. “I think the whole idea of suicide is controversial,” he said. “But I also think you want this woman to commit suicide which is a very unusual thing in television.”

“Last Wish” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on ABC.