Lincoln General at the Movies
A Look Back at ‘Terms of Endearment’
It’s the moment that might have singlehandedly given Shirley MacLaine her first and only Academy Award. Toward the end of the movie “Terms of Endearment,” the star actress delivers a scene for the ages.
“She’s in pain! My daughter is in pain!” she cries as she circles a nursing station, pleading with nurses to act. “Give her the shot, you understand me? Give my daughter the shot!”
That last line punctuates an iconic, tense thirty-second scene that has become the lasting moment from this movie. If you’re a Lincolnite, or just a movie buff, you probably know that MacLaine performed her Oscar-winning scene inside the walls of Lincoln General Hospital (LGH).
“Terms” is jam-packed with Hollywood stars such as MacLaine, Debra Winger, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Jeff Daniels and John Lithgow. It follows a mother and daughter over several years of their lives, exploring their complex relationship and how to love somebody who is different from you. A smash hit, grossing more than $100 million worldwide, it also earned 11 Oscar nominations and took home five awards, including one for Best Picture.
Director James L. Brooks and the rest of the Paramount film crew arrived on the doorstep of Lincoln General on May 11, 1983, after coming to an agreement with hospital administration. The production was looking for a real hospital to shoot scenes from the end of the movie, which is partially set in Nebraska.
Many LGH staff were involved with the filming of scenes at the hospital. More than 300 employees and volunteers applied for parts in the movie. Over 100 of them were included as extras, including Shelley Nielsen, a head oncology nurse who had a speaking part in the film.
During the roughly two weeks of filming at LGH, the camera was often followed by clusters of curious spectators. Scenes were shot in an unoccupied wing of the hospital, as well as the courtyard, front lobby and cafeteria.
Crew even altered two locations within the hospital to pass for a hotel. To save the trouble of moving equipment out of the building, set designers transformed a room in the Professional Office Building into a Holiday Inn hotel room. The hospital’s dismissal desk also briefly became the lobby of the hotel.
Another employee with a notable role was Sheila Exstrom, a nursing administrator at LGH who served as medical advisor to the crew. She was always on set during filming at the hospital, advising on the authenticity of medical dialogue and scenes.
Exstrom also informed people when they were cast as extras, which she said was a rewarding experience. Just as rewarding was knowing that others were working to keep the hospital operating.
“I think we held well to our premise that patient care comes first,” Exstrom said in an LGH publication. “I’m proud of the employees who kept the hospital running.”
“There was chaos, but it was controlled chaos,” assistant administrator Dave Okerlund added at the time. “Paramount was overwhelmed by our cooperation and courtesy. Many of them commented that we provided the most congenial environment they had ever worked in.”
Fun Fact: While filming in Lincoln, Debra Winger met then-governor of Nebraska Bob Kerrey. The pair dated for two years. “What can I say? She swept me off my foot,” the governor said to reporters, alluding to a war injury he sustained in Vietnam.
Bill Kulwicki, a maintenance technician with Bryan Medical Center, remembers his small role in the production while he was working at Lincoln General. He was responsible for shipping samples of paint colors and wallpaper back to Hollywood after filming, just in case the production had to rebuild parts of the hospital on a soundstage for reshoots.
The film includes numerous other locations around Lincoln, including its airport and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. According to the World-Herald, the filming brought more than $1.5 million to the local economy. LGH’s cancer ward earned around $40,000 for allowing the film crew to shoot at the facility, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
After filming, the movie was released later that year in November. A premiere event was held in Lincoln on November 22, after an initial premiere in New York City, with a full red-carpet treatment at the Stuart Theatre (now known as the Rococo Theatre). Proceeds from the showing went to Lincoln General Hospital.
The hospital was as important as anything in the movie.
— Brooks via phone to an audience at the film's premiere in Lincoln
Although the interior of Bryan West Campus now looks entirely different than it did as Lincoln General Hospital in the 1980s, that moment is frozen in time in the movie. If you’d like a look back at Lincoln General and the surrounding city during this period, look to the silver screen.
“It’s interesting to watch it and see people from the past, and the building as it was back then,” Kulwicki said. “You see the changes and you go, ‘my goodness.’ It was an interesting time.”
Fun Fact: Polly Platt, Oscar-nominated production designer for “Terms of Endearment,” gave Brooks a cartoon as a thank-you gift after the release of the movie. Brooks loved the cartoon and hung it up in his office, later asking the cartoonist to create shorts for “The Tracey Ullman Show.” The cartoonist? Matt Groening, who would go on to co-create “The Simpsons” with Brooks.
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