Kate Jackson - Why I get crazy and start yelling
Title: Why I Get Crazy and Start Yellin’
Source: TVGuide
Author: Jack Hicks
Date: February 11-17, 1984
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The rain soaks tony Benedict Canyon, and the sound of runoff gurgling at the road below
is undercut by a faint electric whine. What looks like a large exotic blossom emerges from
the gloom. “Hi. How you doin’?” a throaty voice asks. With a wave of her cane, KateJackson stops the funicular, braces her hot pink visor against the downpour, and welcomesthe visitor aboard for a ride back up the hill.
A service device, the two-person funicular (electric tram) is more a necessity than an extravagance as it fights up against the wind, for Kate Jackson is only recently out of acast and off crutches. Early in the filming of her new CBS series, “Scarecrow and Mrs.
King,” a leap down the stairs into her living room tore most of the ligaments in her ankleand foot. “It sounded like pencils snapping,: she says. “Crack. Crack. Crack. Oh Lord,it hurt.”
It has been a taxing period for the high-energy Jackson–no wheeling through the hills in
her spiffy little rebuilt Mercedes, no romping on these rambling grounds with hermalamutes (Catcher Woman and Rocket Man), no rearing across the tennis court for fouror five hours on Saturday afternoons. If you’ve watched carefully on Monday nights, you’ve noticed the serendipitous sleuth, Mrs. Amanda King, has been doing most of herdiscovering sitting down, framed in medium close-ups, her plastered and braced right foot well out of view.
But while her activities have been dampened, Kate Jackson seems happy. Four rocky years since her farewell to “Charlie’s Angels” in 1979, she is once again starring in asuccessful series. She has a new home and a shiny new marriage , to 28-year-old formerNew York businessman David Greenwald.
After filming until 10 Friday night, the workaholic Jackson has been working
all daySaturday. She’s now back from a long fashion photography session. Casual in running shoes (one), gray sweat pants, a blue Hawaiian shirt asquawk with yellow parrots, she
hobbles spiritedly into a tour of her elegant old brick-and-wood English country-style home, into which she and Greenwald have not yet fully moved.
“Up there,” she waves toward a woody crest framed in the dining-room windows, “is Ann-Margret and Roger Smith. Back down this way, Jackie Bisset–she lives in the place everybody says Clark Gable and Carole Lombard used for their secret trysts. Further on,”
the cane waggles, “Brenda Vaccaro and Cher.”
In another voice it would be shameless name-dropping, but Kate Jackson talks in a warm, malty voice, one redolent of Alabama, where she was born and spent the first 19 of her 34
years. “Now this is the kitchen,” she goes on. “I just love the kitchen. You know, no matter how wealthy or celebrated your friends are, you still end up hanging out in the kitchen–and this is goin’ to be a great kitchen.”
After three tumultuous seasons as ‘the smart one’ on “Charlie’s Angels,” Jackson left in an
‘I-quit-no-you-can’t-quit-you’re-fired’ scenario. Shortly before she departed, in “what I hope will be the worst decision I ever make in my life–I don’t want to make any worse,” she married actor Andrew Stevens two months after meeting him at the beach. What followed was a series of lukewarm film features: “Thunder and Lightening,” with DavidCarradine, “Dirty Tricks,” with Elliot Gould, and a 1982 dud, “Making Love.” Her marriage to Stevens quickly soured, and on Jan. 1, 1981, she filed for divorce. Shecontinues to voice public regrets, particularly over the financial
settlement. “I felt,” shetold Joan Rivers during a recent “Tonight Show” questioning, “as if my
ex-husband drove up to my bank account with a Brinks truck.”
Underneath the Jackson surface runs a rip of intensity and tenacity that makes it unlikely she will ever drowse her way through life or her craft. You can call her ‘tempermental’ or
‘hard to work with,’ or simply, ‘an impossible b—-,’ as her critics certainly have, but she is definitely not going to go gently into that good night that awaits us all at the end.
“I was down when I met David,” she says, easing onto a living-room couch, her husband
sporting with the malamutes outside before he heads off on an errand. The dogs return to
the patio door, watching their mistress, muzzles making foggy prints on the cool glass
door. “I knew him for months before we realized our friendship could develop into something more–if we nurtured it. I was dragging through life out here and we began talking on the telephone. Him in New York, me in L.A.–two or three hours a night for weeks. Time and long distance can be a good thing.”
Linked for years with Hollywood’s most eligible men, , including Warren Beatty, David Soul, and Nick Nolte, Jackson found romantic life taxing. “Somebody’d storm into my life–whoosh!–and I’d get all wrapped up like a true romantic.” Her eyes widen. “ThenI’d have to pick up the pieces. With David, I took my time and I feel like all the pieces are finally in place.”
Jackson and Greenwald were married on May 1, 1982, and after trying bicoastal marriage
for a while, Greenwald moved to Los Angeles, where he now serves as president of their Shoot the Moon production company. A photograph of the sun-bleached pair, taken byGina Lollabrigida during their Long Island honeymoon, hangs on a nearby wall.
“Now that picture,” Jackson points to an adjoining photograph of a child in a creamy pinafore, “is me when I was 4. I look at that a lot, wondering what it was like to be little and barefoot and unaware of myself. When I was little in Birmingham, I knew I wanted to be an actress, but I didn’t tell anybody. I did practice signing my autograph–names like Misty Starlight. One day at the pool, I handed Cheetah B. Gaskin–my best girl friend, she’s still down there, married with twins–my autograph. ‘Keep this,’ I whispered realsecret-like. ‘It’s gonna be worth something.’” Jackson chuckles at the memory. “I’m sure she threw it away.”
In 1970, producer Dan Curtis (“The Winds of War”) signed her for her first regular television role in “Dark Shadows,” a soap opera produced in New York. “I was a terrific ghost for nine months. I never spoke, I beckoned.” Her mien sobers, her tone tightens. “Some of the cast was extremely jealous. I was 20, and things seemed to be coming on asilver platter. If those folks knew how much of my craft I learned from them, they’dprobably slit their throats.
In New York, Kate Jackson took to visiting Katharine Hepburn, her chief heroine. “On
Mondays, when I knew she was out of town, I’d knock on the kitchen door, leave her
flowers and take off. I still have two letters from her–in this big, bold script–but I never
met her. I stopped leaving flowers because I was afraid she’d finally open
the door and bust me. She was so strong. Friends have offered to introduce me, but I couldn’t do that. It just doesn’t seem…” she falters, “well… right. I can’t talk to Katharine Hepburn.”
Happy as Kate Jackson seems, there is a part of her that lingers on the turbulence of her “Angel” days and her divorce from Stevens, and–some suggest–that part may surface on the set of “Scarecrow.” Hepburn’s example buoys her up. “I used to stand
near her bus stop and watch her come home–watch the way she’d stride right through the crowd. I
still remember the thing she said: “I don’t care what they say about me as long as it isn’t
true. I live by that!” Jackson says, slapping the couch for emphasis.
Jackson also met television executive Renee Valente in New York, a woman with a keen eye for talent. Valente had a guiding hand in the early careers of Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, David Soul and Farrah Fawcett, and when she saw Jackson in “Dark Shadows” she asked to meet her. “I loved that voice of hers,” Valente recalled in her 20th Century-Fox off several days after this interview. “It brought to mind Bankhead, Bacall, Hepburn. But I noticed her eyes, those brown eyes that sparkle with such energy. She had class, energy and a vulnerability that rounded the edges. I told her I thought she could be a major talent if she came to Los Angeles.”
Jackson moved West, and Valente mothered her along. “My husband and I had her over
to our house to eat, advised her on where to live, what to spend, watched over her. I’d told her to come out here and I felt responsible. She was still something of a Southern innocent, and I didn’t want her swallowed up by this town.” Four years later, Jackson landed the role of Sabrina Duncan, centerpiece of “Charlie’s Angels.”
“She brought class and intelligence to ‘Angels,’” Valente said firmly. “Sure, Jaclyn Smith
and Farrah Fawcett were very good, but without Kate–I don’t care how much glitter they wrote in–no show. If she was outspoken during the show, she was bright and she was right.”
Jackson agrees. “Yes, I had my say about ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ Why is that such a big deal? We’re not robots, though some people would like that. I was getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning, pouring my life into it. ‘T and A,’ that’s all anybody wanted to talk about, but Iknew we had to have story and character. I’m no great shakes in the ‘T’ department, but I’ve got a pretty nice ‘A.’ Ooh,” she holds her head in mock exasperation, pulling hervisor over her eyes, “did I say that? My parents are gonna read this…”
Flushed, Jackson goes on. “I left the show abruptly. The ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ episode was only part of it.” Offered the role before Meryl Streep, Jackson still smarts at the loss. “Every time we had the schedule worked out between Columbia and the producers, something interfered. It was like a juicy carrot dangled for so long. We could have worked it out–we should have.
“Oh, beans. Shoulda, woulda, coulda” her voice cracks slightly. “Even if I’d done
‘Kramer,’ I wouldn’t have done ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ or ‘Sophie’s Choice’ or ‘Silkwood.’ But I’d sure like to have had the chance. I don’t think it’s right to interfere in someone’s life like that.
“Look, I’m a Type-A personality. I need to get up early every day and I need a schedule and I need to work hard. I can make a very good living doing two TV films every year and a theater film every three, but I don’t want to live a life in which my big daily decisionis where to eat lunch. That’s why I came back to regular TV with ‘Scarecrow.’”
She tenses, her voice gravelly. “I work 12 or 14 hours a day. Here it’s Saturday night and I’m working. That’s why I can get so distressed and crazy and start yellin’’ and screamin’ at the studio ‘We gotta do this or that.’” She acts it out broadly. “I’m giving my life to this business. Let’s make it as good as we can.”
There was no yelling or screaming last night at Burbank Studios, but the filming of “Scarecrow and Mrs. King” lumbered along, as Jackson and her cohorts Mel Stewart and Martha Smith ground through one scene in “Sudden Death” for almost two hours. The mood at 10 P.M. mirrored the murky gloom outside.
“Sticks!” Jackson said loudly, in search of the wardrobe woman and her crutches. “How’s
it look? How’re we doin’?” Her brows furrowed, she crutched briskly through a tangle of cables, as if the only thing in the world was this one-minute scene in a Monday-night television series.
Veteran supporting actor Stewart, best remembered as Lionel’s Uncle
Henry in “All in the Family,” lit a cigarette wearily. “Whew. That lady is intense. I love working with her–she pulls it out of you. No shtick on this show.”
One of the few black actors in a television series, Stewart plays Billy Melrose, a CIA-like functionary who shepherds the wide-eyed Amanda King through the world of intrigue. He
has a first sargeant’s view of the world, as if he has seen it all spin by before. He smiled, remembering his first meeting with Kate Jackson.
“Sure I’d heard all that stuff about ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ Who hadn’t? But from the first meeting, Kate Jackson has worked this job. She stays in character, has a mental toughness about her. Billy Melrose thinks of himself as a teacher and with Amanda as a student, there’s no b.s.ing. He’s got his hands full all the time.”
As yet another rewrite was passed out to grumbles and moans, Stewart nodded. “It’s easy to get into a ‘it-doesn’t-have-tobe-just-right-it-just-has-to-be-Monday-night’ frame of mind, but not with Kate and Bruce Boxleitner around.”
Yeah, we ran late last night,” Jackson said. “But we got off the track after the first few shows–too many car chases, helicopters, gimmicks. I’m sure some people think of me as a pain, but when you have 13 weeks at best, you can lose an audience like that,” snappingher fingers. “I can’t afford that.”
Indeed she can’t. About three weeks after this rainy night chat, the Scarecrow Struggles came to a head. Plagued by delays, chronic script hassles and a general deterioration of working conditions, executive producers Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Lemming left the show. While Jackson did not make the decision to accept their resignations, she ownsa good hunk of the fiscal action and her opinion counted heavily. Juanita Bartlett of “The Rockford Files” joined “Scarecrow.” If she can evoke the complex warmth and humor of Kate Jackson as well as she did with James Garner, the show will surely profit.
Talk turns to deja vu stories, ‘kindred spirits,’ and reincarnation, all of which Kate Jackson embraces. “I feel like I was an actress in another life,” she says, tired and dreamy. “Something happened. Maybe I can get it right this time around.”
“Goodbye and thank you,” she says warmly, latching the funicular gate. She eyes her prized ‘74 brown Mercedes nearby. “Dustin Hoffman told me if you live in Beverly Hills long enough,” her voice rises over the whirring cables, “you turn into a little brown
Mercedes. I hope not. Who’d want to be a car anybody could drive around?”