Slamon is a long-distance runner, both in sneakers on the UCLA track and in his mission to stop cancer. He pushes ahead with Herceptin, despite his own modesty and the obstacles presented by the drug maker Genentech, some of whose executives worry that the company will suffer if the drug fails. "We're not businessmen," he yells in a moment of frustration at a Genentech meeting, "we're doctors." In the late 1980s, Slamon gets fund-raising help from the extroverted Lilly Tartikoff (a breezy Angie Harmon), whose husband, NBC head Brandon Tartikoff, had been treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma by Slamon. Tartikoff enlists Revlon in the cause and throws glamorous charity events.
As "Living Proof" moves from 1988 across a decade, we meet the women who risk the quality of their final days to experiment with Slamon. Bernadette Peters is an artist, wife, and mother who has lost hope and is tired of chemo: "I refuse to die bald and throwing up," she says to Slamon. Regina King is a clothing designer who won't marry her boyfriend because she's convinced she'll die young. Tammy Blanchard, who played the young Judy Garland in "Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows," is an emotional lightning rod as a woman whose mother (Swoosie Kurtz) won't let her give up.
Each of these actresses has a small amount of screen time, and yet as an ensemble they save the movie from colorlessness. Jennifer Coolidge is, as always, amusing in a brief turn as the gallows-humor gal who cracks wise during the Herceptin infusions, and Trudie Styler is remarkable as a desperate trial subject. Styler, who is married to Sting, has one of the most complex scenes in "Living Proof," when she meets privately with Slamon after the first round of trials.
Connick, meanwhile, is Connick. He's a likable if wooden presence, and his limitations as an actor are compensated for by the exuberance of the actresses, including Paula Cale Lisbe, who makes the best of her cliched role as the doctor's long-suffering but supportive wife. Connick is slightly more believable as a husband and father than he is in the expository scientific scenes, during which he has to explain how Herceptin works to his young assistant (Amanda Bynes).
"Living Proof," which Lifetime is presenting as part of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, does not strain to be cheery. But the movie does have a positive ring, as it celebrates and honors the people who, with their persistence and spirit, have successfully taken some power away from a painful diagnosis.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.
