TV Guide, April 29-May 5, 1972

Well you have to laugh a lot

A not-so-serious young actress tells how to survive while playing 
a blind detective's assistant

By Digby Diehl

The secret of survival on a show like Longstreet is just not to 
take it seriously," says Marlyn ("as in Brando") Mason ("as in 
James"), who co-stars as Nikki Bell, secretary/assistant to the 
blind insurance investigator. "I mean, all day long you're 
watching a guy with perfect 20-20 vision pretending to be blind 
while a bunch of apparently sane adults are going 'bang-bang' at 
each other with toy guns, and I'm walking around these take 
buildings pretending that I'm somebody else. And we're getting 
paid for it! How can anybody take this business seriously?"

Marlyn, who was the original chirper, the cheer-'em-up kid on the 
Longstreet set, before the show was canceled, isn't a cynic or a 
slouch when it comes to her work, but she firmly believes that 
show business was meant to be tun-for the actors as well as the 
audience. "When I was in 'How Now, Dow Jones' on Broadway, I was 
hating the show, New York, myself, and the world until director 
George Abboff came along," she recalls. "I was amazed at his 
vitality at the age of 81 and followed him around trying to learn 
the secret. He said it was simple: don't take yourself too 
seriously. So now, when I'm getting all excited or depressed about 
some acting problem, I just stop and tell myself life is too short 
to get worried to death over a television show. Maybe it I was a 
doctor saving lives and so forth, I would take the whole thing 
more seriously. But when you realize that it's all make-believe, 
it seems ludicrous and out-of-proportion to do anything but enjoy 
it."

A visit to Paramount studios when Longstreet was shooting gave 
ample evidence that she is a practicer as well as a preacher. For 
a show that was about a series of murders, robberies and other 
tragedies all investigated by a man with a dog and a cane . . . 
well, given those circumstances, the sound stage was a comparative 
barrel of laughs.

James Franciscus would be staring at Marlyn with one of his 
practiced out-of focus, I-Can't-Really-See-You looks, with the 
camera looking at him over her shoulder. Just as he finished a 
line rehearsal, she would cross her eyes and completely break up 
Franciscus, who had to focus, to believe what he was seeing. She 
would toss a slightly ribald remark to the crew and everyone, 
including the director, would be laughing, She was a ball of 
energy and good humor, grabbing coffee for people, finding me a 
chair, and talking her head off, comically, all the while.

"I'm not saying I'm Miss Goody Twoshoes," she says, not that the 
thought would have crossed my mind, "but I'm pretty honest about 
the kind of person I am and I'm sensitive to people liking each 
other, having good feelings, whether it be two people or a large 
group. I always get along well with the guys on the crew of a show 
because I feel this way; I guess I'm typed as a sort of 'crew 
girl.' I used to swear with them a lot, but I'm trying to cut that 
out. I grew up hearing some pretty rough talk, since my father was 
a welder. Somewhere along the line, when I was little, someone 
must have laughed at my swearing and I started doing it for comic 
effect. But I don't feel that need to draw attention to myself so 
much any more. I just want to enjoy my work."

For a woman who doesn't take it too seriously, Marlyn was plenty 
intense about her role as Nikki Bell. Even when she was just 
talking about her part, she gestured and pondered with all the 
angst of a Method actress (which she is not) preparing to play 
Ophelia. It was hard to retrain from reminding her not to be too 
serious.

"There's a part of me that didn't quite come across in Longstreet. 
I know it was supposed to be a heavy dramatic show, but I think 
there could have been a little more spunk put into it as tar as my 
character went. It seems dull that Nikki didn't have much personal 
energy.

"I'm always trying to make the correct choice for a line of 
dialogue, getting all emotionally involved. But, in tact, it's 
usually better when I just give my first reaction to it, just read 
the line the way it looks, without getting underneath it. I've 
never been one of. those people who has all her lines rewritten to 
suit her. I guess that's the stubborn actress in me. I say to 
myself: 'Hey, that's the way the author wrote it, now you find a 
way to say it'."

Of course, Marlyn might have made a few changes in those script 
formats, given the chance. "One of the things I got sick of was 
that line every week to Jim Franciscus: 'Are you sure you want to 
go alone?' Or: 'Don't you want Duke to go with you?' Or: 'I don't 
think you should do it by yourself.' How long had I been working 
for this blind man who doesn't like being treated as though he's 
blind? A year? I knew damn well he could take care of himself. He 
goes ripping into the action every week, doesn't he? Well, it 
seemed a little silly. I just got tired of sounding like his 
mother. "

Longstreet was a long-sought home for Marlyn, however, in a career 
that wandered through nearly 80 guest appearances on all of the 
major television shows. "I never could handle the emotional part 
of working closely for  six days with the cast and crew of a show 
that I was doing a guest shot in and then . . . nothing. You never 
see those people again and all the good times and relationships 
that have developed are lost. The most important thing about 
Longstreet for  me was having a stable relationship with a group 
of peopie."

To continue our discussion of MM's life with Longstreet, I visited 
her apartment, high above the Sunset Strip with a spectacular view 
of Los Angeles trom its cozy environment. On the
coffee table is a book of crossword puzzles and a copy of "Uncle 
Wiggily." "I don't know if W.C. Fields ever read 'Uncle Wiggily'," 
says Marlyn, pouring a glass of honey wine, "but I can I sort of 
hear him reading it aloud when" I ever I look at it. You know, I'd 
really I like to be well-read, but I could go out tomorrow and buy 
600 books and not read one of them. Or read them and forget them. 
I can't remember what I did yesterday. The crossword puzzles are 
just a great way to kill time, like doing needle point, which I 
enjoy, too.

"I'm sure some actors have really exciting lives off the screen, 
like Steve McQueen with his cars. But I just sort of get up and do 
whatever I feel like doing. Which is absolutely nothing. I wonder 
a lot about things like: is there a life after death? I think if 
there's such a thing as reincarnation, please God, let me come 
back as Barbra Streisand. If I could have that voice, I'd put up 
with the nose and all the rest. Other days, I think it's silly to 
worry about death a~ growing old. I'm 31 years old right now, and 
my friends advise me to pretend I'm younger. But I love being 31! 
I wouldn't want to be any other age!"

Which is a good thing, because immutably, undeniably, Marlyn was 
born on Aug. 7, 1940 in California's San Fernando Valley. "I 
remember when World War II was over. We lived across the street 
from a mission and I remember the bells chiming on that day." An 
obviously strong-willed lady, she decided that she wanted a life 
on the stage after her first triumph at 5, singing "Santa Claus Is 
Comin' to Town" for  her church. By the time she was 9, her 
nontheatrical family had her enrolled in the usual singing, 
dancing and piano lessons. She was also performing with some local 
groups and on a few TV talent shows. In high school she was 
featured by the children's wing of the Players' Ring Theatre in 
such stalwart chestnuts as "Cinderella," "The Arabian Nights" and 
"Tom Sawyer."

"I was 18 in 1958, just out of high school, and the Beatnik 
movement was happening, so I got a job as a waitress in one of the 
first Beat coffeehouses in Los Angeles. But I didn't feel a part 
of the Beat Generation. Being born in the '40s and growing up in 
the '50s, I'm right in the middle of generations. I don't feel 
that I belong to anything: I'm sort of a mixture of the Victorians 
and the hippies."

After an unsuccessful marriage, Marlyn joined the Billy Barnes Los 
Angeles Revue in 1962 for eight months, winning a lot of notice 
with her "Pink Pussycat" routine. "And then I did television, 
television, television, with the exception of 'How Now' Dow Jones' 
on Broadway, which convinced me that I really didn't want to do. a 
long-run musical comedy as I had thought I wanted to do all my 
life." Her name on a Broadway marquee impressed Hollywood enough 
to put her into an Elvis Presley picture in 1968, "The Trouble 
with Girls." "I just adored Elvis," she coos. "He's a gentleman 
with good manners and works hard, but he's fun. I was amazed that 
with his kind of success he was still so friendly. We became very 
good friends and on the set would get into some heavy talk about 
philosophy or whatever."

There was more action and less philosophy on the set of her second 
motion picture, "Making It." in which she played a basketball 
coach's frustrated wife who was, shall we say, playing out the 
title role with the coach's star center there on the screen in 
living flesh tones. "The nude scenes in that film really didn't 
bother me at the time I did them," says Marlyn cavalierly. "But I 
don't think I'd do nude scenes again. Not because I'd be 
embarrassed, but because I feel that it's really not necessary. It 
has nothing to do with being naughty: but I've seen so many films 
where I thought it was just as exciting or more exciting it you 
didn't show everything. of course, that comes from a lifetime of 
watching old movies on television-that romantic aura of the oldies 
comes through. At heart, I guess I'm really old-fashioned."

A couple of years ago, that romantic aura swelled with violins and 
witty charms, when Peter Ustinov, who starred in the Hall of Fame 
special "A Storm in Summer," in which she appeared, took a special 
interest in Marlyn. "Peter is absolutely marvelous. He's one of 
the most intelligent and funny men I've ever known-and both at one 
time. He spends most of his time in Europe and we had a great 
correspondence, one of those 19th-century letterwriting orgies. 
I've got volumes of brilliant letters he wrote me.

"At one time, early in my life, I went to a psychiatrist to find 
out why I picked the kind of men I kept picking," says Marlyn. 
analyzing her love life. "Every single one was frustrated in his 
work and not fulfilled as a person. Their lives were their work 
and I was a masochist for getting involved with such unhappy 
people. They really just take it out on their women. It took a lot 
of nerve for me to go to a psychiatrist. but it has certainly 
helped my life."

Now that Marlyn's career is blossoming, she has hit a winning 
streak in her love life. It's the only thing she is really 
mysterious about. Who it is she won't say. But-"I've found a man 
who makes me feel just wonderful. I knew at a very young age that, 
as much as I wanted to perform, it was just a substitute for 
someone to share my life with. Well, now I've got both' my work 
and my man, and I'm going to live happily ever after." That is, if 
she doesn't take it too "seriously."