Barbeau's a Ms. at Home in the Kitchen
by
Harry Harris
Is
producer Norman Lear partial to bosomy "daughters?"
Sally
Struthers, who plays Archie Bunker's offspring in Lear's "All
in the Family," is formidably buxom. So is Adrienne Barbeau,
the brown-haired, brown-eyed, 29-year-old actress/singer who portrays
the divorced daughter in Lear's "Maude," Mondays at 9 P.M.
(Channel 10).
"Whether
my bosom had anything to do with my getting the role of Carol, I don't
know," Miss Barbeau says cheerfully, "but if it did, I'm
very grateful to it.
"Maude
herself (Beatrice Arthur) is no slouch, that way. We've done jokes
on the show about it. When Maude's mother (Audrey Christie) was recently
introduced, she said 'Carol reminds me of Maude as a girl -- the same
complexion, the same eyes and really stacked!"
Yet
in the next breath, Adrienne says of Carol, "Of all the characters
in 'Maude', she the 'straightest.'"
You
can tell at a glance that that's a ludicrously inappropriate adjective,
but Adrienne declines to furnish statistical information.
"My
dimensions are off-limits," she says, "but only because
if I gave out such information feminists would have a heart attack."
It
isn't shyness that makes her shy away from divulging such details.
"After eight years of living in New York," she says, "NOTHING
shocks me."
Moreover,
during that period she starred in a 1970 off-Broadway musical, "Stag
Movie," about the making of a pornographic film.
"I
spent about one-third of the time undraped, but there were no love
scenes. It was a farce, filled with jumping and waving American flags.
"I
was rolled around in a grocery cart and did a lot of singing and standing
on my head nude.
"I
remember feeling embarrassed during the first day of rehearsal, but
on stage if I was concerned, it was, if anything, about singing the
right note."
Her
"Stag Movie" stint followed a lengthy engagement as one
of the daughters in the ultrawholesome "Fiddler on the Roof."
"I
had been doing "Fiddler" a long time -- almost two-and-a-half
years! -- and I just HAD to leave! I didn't know how I could keep
repeating the same role without going crazy.
"I
loved the people, I had a steady income, but there was no chance for
growth.
"I
desperately needed a change. I was even ready to quit for unemployment.
It was a time when nudity was very predominant in off-Broadway shows,
and I was offered 'Stag Movie,' with a chance to do ten numbers.
"The
critics were so-so, and it only ran about five months, but it was
a help to me as an actress and as a singer. I had the job of carrying
the show, so it built my confidence.
"The
photographs taken, unfortunately, were terrible. They weren't like
the Marilyn Monroe calendar, so they didn't help my career.
"But
I don't think my being in 'Stag Movie' will be a detriment, either.
"I'd
appear in a movie that required nudity, but it would depend on the
script. I'm not against nudity in films, per se."
She
concedes herself, she told Mervin Griffin recently, "more crazy"
than the rather restrained Carol.
She
ticked off other differences: "I don't live at home. I'm not
divorced. I haven't been married. I have no son."
She's
been on her own, she told Griffin, since September, 1964, when she
left Sacramento, Calif., where she had started ballet lessons at 3,
and had hatched ambitions to become a musical comedy star, to seek
show biz fame and fortune in New York.
"When
I got there," she recalled, "I answered a newspaper ad --
two girls wanted a roommate. One turned out to be a hooker and the
other an alcoholic. I left when I found people sleeping in my bed."
She
has made similarly startling revelations on other talk shows. As a
"Tonight" guest, for instance, she recalled that during
go-go dancer days, a man approached her, introduced himself as a famous
novelist, and said he wanted to make her a movie star. "What,"
Johnny Carson asked, "did he really want?" Said Adrienne,
"My virginity!"
On
a "Mike Douglas Show," Adrienne was asked to help surprise
"Maude" co-star Billy Macy. Macy, she was told, wouldn't
know she was there. Instead, he was told she was in the wings and
he began making such needling comments as "Adrienne Barbeau wears
padded bras."
"I
was backstage," she says, "where I could only see the band.
A camera was on me, but there was no warning red light. And when Bill
started saying those nasty, tacky, teasing things about me, I decided
to be funny and mouthed a most unladylike phrase to the band leader.
"When
finally the drummer signalled, 'You're on!' I nearly fell apart. I
raced out and started beating up on Macy!
"How
did they handle the indelicate phrase? The show's on tape, so they
wrote 'CENSORED' across my mouth!"
Because
her French father and her Armenian mother were divorced when she was
12, Adrienne says, she's leery of matrimony. Yet she enjoys "cleaning,
cooking and taking care of my man." (At the moment that's Goodson-Todson
game show musical supervisor Michael Malone.)
She
regrets that "It's still so very difficult to have a child legally
outside wedlock," but predicts, "That may change."
"I'm
very serious," she says, "about the things that are important
to me. I'd like to get more involved in women's politics. I'm not
a card-carrying member, but I guess I live my life according to feminist
tenets.
"However,
I'm exceptionally schizoid, totally double-natured. When I'm not acting,
I have to create in another area -- cooking, bread-baking, yogurt-making,
crocheting, knitting, house decorating.
"How
feminists would react was not a consideration when I became Carol
in 'Maude.'
"It's
hard to put a label on how I feel about things. I enjoy household
'chores' when it comes out of caring for someone.
"Under
the circumstances I'm happy to work a 10-hour day and then come home
and make cookies!"
|
Read more about Adrienne in
her great autobiography "There
Are Worse Things I Could Do". Order safely
and securely from Amazon. com by clicking on the cover at
left.
*Webmaster's note* The book
is worth reading alone for the comment about Bill Macy's behavior
at a Writer's Guild banquet!
|
*from
the Philadelphia Inquirer TV Week, April 27, 1975
