[5][6] The saga tells the story of the enduring friendship between Orry Main of South Carolina (Patrick Swayze) and George Hazard of Pennsylvania (James Read), who become best friends while attending the United States Military Academy at West Point but later find themselves and their families on opposite sides of the war.

[9][10] North and South (1985) also featured many well-known actors as guest stars, including Elizabeth Taylor as bordello proprietor Madam Conti, David Carradine as the sadistic Justin LaMotte, Hal Holbrook as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Gene Kelly as Bent's father Senator Charles Edwards, Robert Mitchum as Colonel Patrick Flynn, M.D., Johnny Cash as abolitionist John Brown, Jean Simmons as Orry's mother Clarissa Main, Mitchell Ryan as Orry's father Tillet Main, John Anderson as George's father William Hazard, Jonathan Frakes as George's older brother Stanley Hazard, Inga Swenson as George's mother Maude Hazard, Robert Guillaume as abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Morgan Fairchild as Burdetta Halloran, David Ogden Stiers as Representative Sam Greene, and Olivia Cole as Madeline's devoted but doomed servant Maum Sally.

North and South: Book II (1986) saw the return of Carradine as LaMotte, Holbrook as Lincoln, and Stiers as Greene, as well as new guests Lloyd Bridges as Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Anthony Zerbe as Ulysses S. Grant, Nancy Marchand as Dorothea Dix, James Stewart as Miles Colbert, Wayne Newton as Captain Thomas Turner, and William Schallert as Robert E. Lee,[9] with Linda Evans as Rose Sinclair and Olivia de Havilland as Mrs. Neal.

1994's Heaven and Hell featured Peter O'Toole as "louche actor" Sam Trump[11] and Billy Dee Williams as Francis Cardozo.

[12] Garber married screenwriter Chris Hager, whom she met in 1985 when he worked as a grip on the set of North and South: Book II.

[13] North and South (1985) was directed by Richard T. Heffron, from a script adaptation by Patricia Green, Douglas Heyes, Paul F. Edwards, and Kathleen A. Shelley.

It was produced by David L. Wolper, Paul Freeman, Rob Harland, and Chuck McLain, with music by Bill Conti and Stevan Larner as cinematographer.

[14] A soundtrack CD published by Varèse Sarabande in 1985 (VCD47250) contains tracks from the Bill Conti scores to North and South and The Right Stuff.