Betty White, Jennifer Love Hewitt Star; Telecast Marks Beginning of Hallmark Hall of Fame’s 60th Anniversary Year

Betty White (The Proposal, Hot in Cleveland) and Jennifer Love Hewitt (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Ghost Whisperer) star in the new Hallmark
Hall of Fame presentation, The Lost Valentine, premiering on CBS Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011, 9-11pm ET/PT.

This will be the 242nd presentation of the Hallmark Hall of Fame and marks the beginning of the 60th anniversary of television’s longest-running and most-honored series of dramatic specials.

In The Lost Valentine, Caroline Thomas (Betty White) loses her beloved husband Neil in World War II. Every year on the anniversary of the day they said goodbye forever (Valentine’s Day), she makes a pilgrimage to Union Station to salute the memory of the magical time they enjoyed together.

Decades later, a television journalist (Jennifer Love Hewitt) investigates the circumstances of Neil’s death – and falls in love herself, with the couple’s grandson, Lucas (Sean Faris).

The Lost Valentine is based on the novel by James Michael Pratt. Darnell Martin (Cadillac Records, Their Eyes Were Watching God) directs from a teleplay by Maryann Ridini Spencer and Barton Taney. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Brent Shields (November Christmas, When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story) are executive producers; Barbara M. Gangi serves as producer. It is produced by Andrew Gottlieb (Front of the Class, The Russell Girl).

Interviewed on the film’s set, in Atlanta, Jennifer Love Hewitt describes The Lost Valentine as “one of the greatest love stories I’ve ever read.” She continues, “It speaks to an older generation. It speaks to a younger generation. The portrait of the incredible love between Betty’s character and her husband Neil back in the 1940s, and the portrait of my character falling in love with their grandson – I mean, those two story lines just come together so effortlessly.”

Betty White says she joined the project because she’d always wanted to appear in a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. She also loved the story. “If you’ve been lucky enough in real life to experience a deep, loving relationship like Caroline and Neil have,” she says, “well, maybe you want to revisit it.

“My beloved Allen Ludden and I had a very special love, as do Neil and Caroline.” [White and Ludden were married for 18 years, until 1981, when he passed away.]

Asked about the significance of Valentine’s Day in her own life, Betty White says, “The least we can do is take one day a year just to celebrate love! If you’re lucky enough to have it, nurture it; if you haven’t found it yet, never stop searching!”

The Lost Valentine is from Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions, Inc., in association with Paulist Productions.