 To My Daughter stars Rue McClanahan as a well-to-do matron whose oldest daughter (Michelle Greene) dies. The girl was always McClanahan s favorite; the remaining children (Samantha Mathis and Ty Miller), though not unaffected by the loss, hope that now their mother will pay some attention to them. Instead, McClanahan s grief threatens to shatter her already shaky relationship with her younger offspring. She virtually shuts the kids out of her life in order to finish her older daughter s uncompleted book. To My Daughter was unofficially based on the career of real-life writer Nancy Lynn Schwartz, who did indeed die before completing her history of the Screen Actors  Guild, obliging her mother to finish the job.