Switched at Birth | |
---|---|
Genre | Drama |
Written by | Michael O'Hara |
Directed by | Waris Hussein |
Starring | Bonnie Bedelia Brian Kerwin John M. Jackson Ariana Richards Erika Flores |
Music by | Marvin Hamlisch |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers | Richard Heus Lawrence Horowitz Barry Morrow Michael O'Hara Jeff Wald Mayank Velhankar |
Producers | Ervin Zavada Mark Sennet (supervising producer) Bob Stewart (associate producer) |
Cinematography | Robert Steadman |
Editors | Paul Dixon James Galloway |
Running time | 186 minutes |
Production companies | Columbia Pictures Television Morrow-Heus Productions O'Hara-Horowitz Productions |
Original release | |
Network | NBC |
Release | April 28, 1991 |
Switched at Birth is a 1991 American miniseries directed by Waris Hussein. It is based on the true story of Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg, babies switched soon after birth in a Florida hospital in 1978. [1] NBC aired the production as a two-part miniseries over two consecutive nights on April 28, 1991. [2] [3]
Within days of Arlena Twigg's birth in Florida in late 1978, she is found to have a chronic illness. Blood tests reveal that she is not the biological daughter of Regina and Ernest Twigg. Arlena is ill throughout her life and dies at the age of nine. Subsequently, her parents search for their biological daughter, who they find is being raised as Kimberly Mays by a man who believes that he is her father.
Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg were born within a few days of each other in a Wauchula, Florida hospital in November 1978. Kimberly went home with Bob Mays and his wife Barbara, who died of ovarian cancer when Kimberly was three. Ernest and Regina Twigg of Sebring, Florida took home the Mays' biological daughter, whom they named Arlena. The Twiggs learned that Arlena had the wrong blood type to be their biological daughter when she was nine years old. Following Arlena's death from a heart condition, the Twiggs sought information about their biological daughter and located Kimberly Mays, who became the subject of a custody battle between her biological parents and Bob Mays, the man who raised her after she was switched at birth. Bob Mays had agreed in 1989 to grant the Twiggs visitation rights to Kimberly, but he later cut off the visits. The Twiggs then sued for increased visitation or custody of Kimberly. A Wauchula circuit court ruled in 1993 that Kimberly would be allowed to cut off all contacts with her biological family and that Bob Mays was her psychological father. [4] Though Kimberly won the right to stay with Bob Mays, she later ran away and moved in with the Twiggs.
In a 2015 interview with Barbara Walters for the documentary series American Scandals on Investigation Discovery, Kimberly discussed her troubled early adulthood, two divorces, six children, losing custody of her firstborn to her first husband, living in her car with one child, and working as a stripper to buy food for her children. [5]
The court battle was also the subject of a book entitled The Baby Swap Conspiracy by Loretta Schwarz-Nobel.
Baby M was the pseudonym used in the case In re Baby M, 537 A.2d 1227, 109 N.J. 396 for the infant whose legal parentage was in question.
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The Baby Richard case was a highly publicized custody battle that took place over Danny Kirchner, a young child whose adoption was revoked when his biological father, Otakar Kirchner, won custody in a case that was decided in 1995 by the Illinois Supreme Court. The child became known as "Baby Richard" in widespread media coverage.
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Babies switched at birth are babies who, because of either error or malice, are interchanged with each other at birth or very soon thereafter, leading to the babies being unknowingly raised by parents who are not their biological parents. The occurrence has historically rarely been discovered in real life, but in recent years is becoming more commonly identified due to genealogical testing of DNA, which reveals true genetic parentage. The phenomenon has been common as a plot device in novels and films, such as the TV series Switched at Birth and Autumn in My Heart.
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It was on April 28, 1991 that NBC rolled out a two-night miniseries entitled "Switched at Birth" that dramatized the true story of Kimberly Mays and Arlena Twigg, children who were unwittingly switched in a hospital nursery as infants and raised by the wrong parents for a full decade before the error was detected. The docudrama emerged as one of the year's highest-rated longforms.