Alex Haley

Alex Haley's widow has won a share of his estate and the right to complete his two unfinished books. "It's a glorious day, is what it is," Myran Haley said after the verdict Tuesday. The completion of both works would be "a dream come true," she added. Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Roots: The Saga of an American Family," died in 1992 at age 70.

Sixteen years ago, the late Alex Haley tapped into the American consciousness with his landmark ABC miniseries "Roots." More than 100 million people tuned into the 12 hour-drama, based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1976 best-seller, which chronicled Haley's maternal ancestors' origins from Africa and their passage from slavery to freedom in America. Audiences will see a far different family story depicted in "Alex Haley's Queen," the lavish, six-hour miniseries that begins Sunday on CBS.

A 90-minute ABC interview with Michael Jackson and a CBS miniseries from the late Alex Haley, "Queen," may be the keys to TV's February Nielsen ratings sweeps that begin tonight. NBC, which on Wednesday suddenly named a new entertainment chief, veteran producer Don Ohlmeyer, because of its poor ratings and overall program problems, has the least impressive sweeps schedule on paper.

The only appropriate response to Peter Rainer's "Antihero Worship" (Film Comment, Dec. 6) is that if ever a commentary was gratuitously unnecessary, Rainer's was. After a full page of quasi-analysis and negative criticism, one is taken completely by surprise to find a single line in which Rainer acknowledges that Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" has any merit, as in: "This is a lot to get from a movie and yet it's not enough." Had Rainer really watched the movie or been familiar with the context of the period, he could hardly have failed to recognize the numerous scenes of interwoven footage of the period showing the water hosings and beatings of demonstrators as well as appearances of Martin Luther King Jr., all of which occurred during the '50s and '60s.

The widow of Malcolm X is suing the brother of the late Alex Haley for at least half of the money the author's estate made on the sale of the original manuscript of "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." Haley, author of "Roots," collaborated with the civil rights activist on the autobiography in the early 1960s. It was published in 1964. The book was the basis for the screenplay of the movie "Malcolm X," which opened last week. The lawsuit filed Friday on behalf of Betty Shabazz of Elmsford, N.Y.

The Pulitzer Prize that Alex Haley won for "Roots" sold for $50,000 on Saturday at an estate auction held to pay off the late author's debts. A friend of the writer bought the prize to donate to Haley's boyhood home museum in Henning, Tenn., where Haley is buried, estate attorney Paul Coleman said. George Jewett of San Francisco made the winning bid by telephone. "I think that's what we wanted to happen and it did happen," said George Haley, the author's brother.

Literary treasures from the estate of Alex Haley went on the auction block Thursday. So did piles of minutiae, from Haley's cookbooks to gleanings from his desk drawers. Controversy continued over the sale, as a pleased George Haley, the late author's brother and executor, watched box after box of material that had been sought by museums and libraries go to the highest bidders. "This is like prostitution," fumed Thelma M.

The plight of our fellow citizens in Florida, Louisiana and Hawaii provides an excellent analogy for what is now brewing in East Tennessee, the results of which will scatter hither and yon yet other precious landmarks of this fragile world: Alex Haley's estate, which is to be auctioned later this week (reported Sunday and in Calendar, Sept. 8). The untimely death of Haley in February (African-American History Month) devastated me.

In his last years, Alex Haley, the celebrated author who made millions from his books and television miniseries, was beset by debt, surrounded by supplicants and "financially abused" by many of the people closest to him, say family members and friends. Haley was not bankrupt when he died last Feb. 10 of a heart attack. But his lavish spending and boundless generosity created financial pressures that were compounded by his failure to complete the books he had started.