
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 2, 1990                   TAG: 9003013493
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ELIZABETH HAHN SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: BLA                                LENGTH: Short

AUDITION LEADS TO DOUBLE DRAMA

Doug Chancey had never heard of Elizabeth Van Lew until his agent sent him to Richmond to audition for the role of a Confederate prison guard in a public television program.

"Traitor in My House," a film that aired Feb. 25 on Public Broadcasting System's "WonderWorks" series, told the story of Van Lew, a Richmond socialite and Union sympathizer, as seen through the eyes of her young niece.

To win the part, Chancey camped out for a week to achieve the rough, unkempt look the director wanted for the role. Nell Cox, who directed the film, had contacted Chancey through a Roanoke agency after searching in the Richmond and Tidewater areas for an actor.

It was when Chancey told his family about getting the part that he discovered his family's connections to Van Lew. It seems his great-grandfather, Dr. James Fuller Crane, was Elizabeth Van Lew's attending physician at her deathbed, and his grandmother, Irene Crane Chancey, who still lives in Richmond, knew Van Lew as a child.

In fact, his grandmother, at 97, may be one of the last living links to Van Lew, who went on to become the first postmaster general in Richmond after the war.

"It is fitting that I should have gotten the part because of the family connections," said Chancey, who studied acting in New York before returning to the New River Valley, where he attended college at Virginia Tech.

Chancey also was an extra in "Crazy People," filmed last summer in Roanoke.

by CNB