Copyright 1992 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.   St. Louis Post-Dispatch April 26, 1992, SUNDAY, LATE FIVE STAR Edition SECTION: TV MAGAZINE; Pg. 5 LENGTH: 835 words HEADLINE: A STORY OF MURDER, SEDUCTION EMMY WINNERS CO-STAR IN DOCUDRAMA BYLINE: Jay Bobbin 1992, Tribune Media Services BODY: FACT-BASED television ''docudramas'' are plentiful these days, but one of the newest marks the first teaming of two of the genre's top actresses. Jane Alexander earned an Emmy Award for 1980's ''Playing for Time,'' while Barbara Hershey won hers a decade later for ''Killing in a Small Town,'' and they never worked together before starring in a miniseries that airs Sunday and Monday nights at 8 on Channel 2. Inspired by a 1986 case in Georgia, the ABC drama ''Stay the Night'' has a wife and mother, Blanche Kettmann (Alexander), determined to keep her teen-age son Mike Jr. (played by Morgan Weisser, of the TV movies ''Long Road Home'' and ''Extreme Close-Up'') from facing a murder charge alone. Blanche wants to prove he was seduced into killing a man by the man's sensual and spellbinding wife, Jimmie Sue Finger (Hershey). The authorities are skeptical, and Mike's confession keeps Finger from being indicted. So Blanche decides to trap her a different way, by pretending to befriend her, hoping to draw an eventual admission of complicity. Blanche, however, soon falls prey to Jimmie Sue's charm. The miniseries also features Fred Dalton Thompson, Earl (''Home Improvement'') Hindman and Matthew Posey. It was co-produced by miniseries veteran Stan Margulies (''Roots,'' ''The Thorn Birds'') and J.C. Shardo, an Atlanta-based film maker who developed the story from interviews she conducted with the real-life people involved. Alexander, who won a Tony award for her Broadway debut in ''The Great White Hope,'' reports that she met the actual Blanche ''a number of times. She is an extremely compassionate woman, always able to find the best in someone. Jimmie Sue was a charismatic figure, and I really think Blanche felt maternal instincts with regard to her. Jimmie Sue was also a lot of fun to be around, and it was just a personality thing. They brought things out in each other.'' Conversely, Hershey chose not to meet the real Jimmie Sue, for what she said was a very precise reason. ''While this is a true story and is absolutely based on fact,'' she says, ''it is definitely the Kettmanns' point of view of the facts, and the court's view as well. It may very well be accurate, but it is not Jimmie Sue's view. To this day, she claims she's totally innocent, and I felt that one of the ways to deal with that was by creating a character who was not necessarily the real Jimmie Sue. ''In doing a lot of resea rch, I found very sweet and endearing qualities to her . . . so if Blanche or anybody else in the story is compassionate, there certainly are aspects of Jimmie Sue's character that are appealing, too.'' Hershey's performing choices evidently hit near the mark. Alexander recalls, ''The real Blanche Kettmann happened to see quite a bit of Barbara's work on tape when she and her family visited the set. They had dinner with me and said, 'How did she know exactly how to play her? How did she come so close? That is Jimmie Sue Finger.' That's also the brilliance of Barbara's understanding of what's happening underneath.'' Says Hershey, ''Other times when I've played real characters, I've gone for as much (accuracy) as I could, but I wasn't going off in (far-flung) directions here. I read the transcripts of the trial, I read Jimmie Sue's love letters, and I talked to (the elder) Michael Kettmann and a lot of the other people who were around. It was just a character that formed by my circling in on her, and I needed that kind of freedom to create her.'' Margulies reports that his ''Stay the Night'' producing partner Shardo acquired the rights to the stories of all Kettmann family members - except Mike Jr., who he says will be eligible for parole in approximately two years, ''because you cannot pay a convicted person for their participation.'' Margulies adds that Shardo also obtained Jimmie Sue's cooperation, though the latter is in prison ''for life, but I think there's a parole possibility in 20 years. The real Jimmie Sue is still very much the Jimmie Sue whom we portray. When we started production, she called J.C. and said, 'Can I read a script?' J.C. said, 'Well, it could be a long process. I have to go through all the red tape.' Jimmie Sue said, 'No, you don't, I've already checked with the warden and he agreed,' so she is very good at what she does.'' According to Shardo, ''Jimmie Sue is someone who believes whatever she's doing is right at any given moment, and I think she will go to her grave believing she's innocent, though I could not find anything or anyone to back up what she was telling me.'' Those involved in ''Stay the Night'' acknowledge some similarities to the story of Pamela Smart, the New Hampshire schoolteacher convicted for luring a pupil into killing her husband; that was the focus of a 1991 TV movie that CBS repeated last week. But Margulies maintains, ''The thing that set this story apart was the involvement of the mother, and the fact that the two women became 'friends,' each for a specific purpose.''