This Hunk Has a Problem
Title: Bruce Boxleitner: This Hunk Has a Problem - Getting the Girl
Source: TYGuide
Author: Unknown
Date: Eric Estrin
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It was late spring in the tropics. A Hollywood production company was in Singapore to shoot a movie for television - the first such filming to take place on the tiny island nation in seven years. Enjoying a day off, members of the cast and crew had sailed offshore to a small coral formation, where they spent the afternoon eating, drinking and laughing at one another’s stories about life so far away from home.
Bruce Boxleitner, the star of the TV-movie “Passion Flower” was feeling particularly good. He had dropped some weight in the humid Singapore heat, but he was exercising daily and the Asian diet seemed to be good for his health. When a flu epidemic spread through the production company, Boxleitner had been one of only three people unaffected.
But there was more to his exuberance than that. For years, Boxleitner had been playing strong-but-shallow leading roles on series like Bring ‘Em Back Alive and currently, Scarecrow and Mrs. King on CBS. Now, in a carefully considered career move, he was portraying a character with some obvious flaws– a man willing to kill for the woman he loves. He was enjoying the challenge, and his colleagues were praising his work, saying the part would open new vistas for him.
Then, suddenly, it threatened to end. Boxleitner was munching away on his lunch when a scalding-hot chunk of baked potato lodged in his throat. He began to panic, desperately gasping for breath. Most of his friends didn’t notice; others didn’t know what to do.
“I was afraid for my life,” he says, some weeks later, at the Burbank lot where he films Scarecrow. “All I kept thinking was, what a dumb way to go. I thought, oh, man…I might die right here on this stupid, rocky atoll of Singapore. This is no hero’s death.”
Thanks to a woman familiar with the Heimlich maneuver, Boxleitner is once again striking heroic poses as Lee Stetson (alias Scarecrow), the secret agent who teams up to fight crime with his platonic partner, Mrs. Amanda King (Kate Jackson), on Monday nights. But after Singapore, Bruce is, professionally at least, a changed man. While he’s lucky to have survived the trip intact, he’s clearly hoping that his squeaky-clean image did not.
After just a couple of weeks rest and relaxation at home, Boxleitner–his throat still scratchy from the near-choking–is back at work on the Scarecrow set. He spends a couple of hours shooting two scenes in which he and Jackson meet for dinner at an elegant restaurant, then retreats to his trailer, exhausted. He was out uncharacteristically late last night at a movie premiere, and the lack of sleep has taken the edge off his normally animated conversational style. But before catching a short nap and heading back outside to shoot his next scene, he tries to explain why, after years of turning down roles that might cast him in a less-than-ideal moral light, he agreed to do “Passion Flower” in Singapore.
“I was a bit skeptical at first, for a number of reasons,” he says, popping a throat lozenge. “I was tired, it was the end of the last season, and the thought of going out of the country for a long time didn’t really appeal to me.” He pauses for a moment, and when he speaks again, it’s almost as if he’s decided to cut through the small talk and get right to the point.
“I’m not putting this show down,” he says of Scarecrow, but by it’s very nature, I don’t get the opportunity to have the really romantic scenes too often. That’s basically why I did “Passion Flower”. We were looking for something where I could play a different kind of character. You know,” he says, only half-joking, “everybody in Dynasty is in bed all the time–I wanted to get my two-cent’s worth.”
On Scarecrow , chances are it won’t happen. This season, partly at his request, a new character has appeared as Lee Stetson’s old girl friend who now works at the United Nations. In addition, the simmering relationship between Lee and Amanda has shown signs of heating up. But the possibility of their ever falling in love will probably always remain in possibility–no more, no less. “That’s one of the things makes the show work,” says Jackson, herself part owner of the series. “You’ve got to want to see them get together.”
Their on-screen chemistry, so vital to the show’s success, is no doubt heightened by their mutual respect off-screen. Jackson is an admittedly demanding actress, who has been labeled hard to work with by colleagues in the past. But she and Boxleitner genuinely like each other. They clown around between scenes, and occasionally play tennis together on weekends. “He’s in control of his life, of his career.” Jackson says, naming a few reasons for her admiration. “He’s dedicated, loyal. He’s got a lovely family and a great sense of humor.”
He doesn’t seem to have any problems working with Jackson, and if he does, he refuses to dwell on them. “You’re not always going to get along,” he says, “but there’s never been anything devastating. We don’t have arguments and feud with each other. We don’t always have to talk to each other, either. Katie and I have been [practically] living together on this show for a while now. You know, you don’t have a hell of a lot to say every day. But it obviously works between us.”
At 35, Boxleitner still enjoys doing Scarecrow , but he felt the need to branch out during the summer hiatus. “If you’re going to be a leading man,” he points out, “you’ve got to be able to get the girl.”
In case you haven’t noticed, he certainly looks like a leading man. Six-fee-2, with blondish hair, green eyes and the requisite strong chin, he’s the logical heir to Robert Redford’s mantle of wholesome masculinity.
His demeanor fits the part, as well. Boxleitner sometimes does his own stunts on the show and occasionally gets bumps and bruises, but continues working anyway. He has a reputation for always giving his best effort, and for exuding the type of positive attitude and good humor that holds things together in the pressure cooker atmosphere of day-in, day-out television work.
To hear his colleagues tell it, the main difference between Boxleitner and Dudley Do-Right is that Bruce is for real. “He’s a boy scout, he’s wonderful,” raves executive producer George Geiger. “A real team player,” says “Passion Flower” executive producer, Doris Keating. “He’s a super-patriot,” notes his personal manager, Jay Bernstein. “I have a feeling that if we were in a war, Bruce would be a war hero.”
Applied to Boxleitner, this kind of talk is more than just press-agent prattle. He has ad a thing about larger-than-life heroism ever since childhood. The oldest of four kids, he remembers building fortresses of hay on his grandfather’s Mt. Prospect, Ill. farm, pretending to be Errol Flynn. He tried never to miss an episode of Gunsmoke and caught every Western at the local movie house, where he idolized strong, silent types like Gary Cooper and John Wayne.
Boxleitner first got his own shot at stardom as a teen-ager, when he was thrust into the lead of his high-school production of “My Fair Lady”, because another student came down with mononucleosis. With only four hours of rehearsal and an untrained singing voice, Boxleitner pulled it off, winning not only audience approval, but his leading lady as well.
“I was the hero of the day,” he says, using a favorite word to recall the occasion. “We kissed at the end, gazed into each other’s eyes as the music came up…God, it was something!”
The girl went back to her mono-stricken boy friend at the end of the school year, but Boxleitner had found something more important than fleeting romance. After earning his diploma in summer school, he headed for Chicago, where he studied for three years at the famed Goodman Theatre. At another Chicago theater, he landed a part in a play that eventually took him to Broadway, where the play bombed. He stuck around to do summer stock, then headed for Hollywood, where he soon landed a succession of against-type roles as killers, rapists and other assorted wierdos.
It was around this time that Boxleitner considered changing his name to something that would look a little more natural on a marquee–something more reminiscent of Gable or Flynn or Wayne. He couldn’t do it. “To tell you the truth,” he says, “my grandfather was still alive then–he was a dairy farmer–and he’d have never understood why I would be ashamed of my name.” The move would have been unnecessary anyway. While working on “The Macahans,” a TV-movie that spawned the short-lived but critically acclaimed series How the West Was Won , two things happened to change Boxleitner’s life for the better. First, he fell in love and married Kathryn (Kitty) Holcomb, the actress playing his character’s sister. And second, he caught the attention of Jay Bernstein, the man who helped turn Suzanne Somers, Farrah Fawcett and Linda Evans into household names. Bernstein and Boxleitner agreed there were not enough strong male heroes around for kids to look up to, and soon Boxleitner was playing the kind of roles prescribed by his childhood fantasies.
Now he lives with Kitty, their sons, Sam, 5 years old, and Lee David, 2 months, in a ranch-style home in a rugged part of California’s San Fernando Valley. Kitty gave up acting, temporarily at least, to be a homemaker and to help her husband with his career. They have three horses, two goldfish and a dog, and keep Western knickknacks–including a bronze sculpture of the Duke–around the house.
The relationship is obviously a solid one. Boxleitner spends most of his free time at home and can be found on weekends riding around the neighborhood on one of his quarter horses. He also runs 15 to 20 miles a week, works out on his rowing machine and reads everything he can get his hands on about military history. He and Kitty are both active in charity work and entertain guests at home only sporadically–usually one or two at a time.
If it all sounds a little dull by Hollywood standards, it is. But now that Boxleitner has established himself, he’d like to develop the wider range he worked in for years on stage and in smaller television roles. “I still love doing the hero stuff,” he says, “but I don’t want people to think I’m some cartoon hero, either. It’s just necessary to broaden a bit.”
So he’s starring opposite Barbara Hershey in “Passion Flower”, a noir treatment of lust, betrayal and murder, not unlike the film, “Body Heat,” or any of James M. Cain’s stories. The movie includes several love scenes–some of which are said to be pretty steamy by television standards. In fact, Boxleitner was called on to play so many scenes without a shirt, he requested that his rowing machine be shipped to him overseas.
The role is such a departure for Boxleitner that “he was extremely reluctant at first” to take it, says producer Doris Keating. “He read the script, and Jay Bernstein called me up and absolutely tore into me. He said, ‘Doris, how dare you send me a script like this. What are you doing to me? I’m about to lose my client!’”
Before any damage was done, Boxleitner’s wife persuaded him to reread the script with a more open mind. “At first, he really didn’t think the character had any decent values,” Kitty recalls, “but I felt differently, so he gave it another try. On the second reading, he decided this was it.”
It’s not unusual for Boxleitner to depend on his wife for this type of direction. She talks to Bernstein by phone at least twice a day, trading up-to-the-minute news that could affect her husband’s career. In fact, the three have become so close over the years that the Boxleitners named his manager a godfather to both their children. “I guess, in that way at least, they’re stuck with me for life,”says Bernstein, some of whose previous manager-client relationships have been notoriously brief.
Only time will tell if “Passion Flower” catapults Boxleitner’s career to a new level or turns off his more conservative fans, but don’t expect Boxleitner to change much in either case. “He doesn’t have any pretenses,” says Doris Keating. “Here he is, one of the best looking men in the business, and he doesn’t even realize it. It’s a pleasure to see how well balanced he is.
He also uses his own name. His grandfather would have wanted it that way.