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Everything indeed seems to be coming up roses
for Kate Jackson, one of the newer actresses on
the Hollywood scene.
She is a regular in one of the few bona fide
dramatic hit series of the past season, the only
girl among five stalwarts who have carried “The
Rookies” into top 10 status and certain long
life in its Monday – at – 8 slot on ABC.
Her first movie, “Limbo,” was an unqualified
personal success, in which she received kudos
for an “outstanding performance.” She supplanted
Ali MacGraw in the affections of Bob Evans, one
of the big junior tycoons of the industry. They
are said to be serious to the point of thinking
about marriage.
Yet, four summers ago she was an apprentice at
the Stowe, Vt., a stagestruck teenster willing
to do anything and everything around the boards.
“I got into only two of the seven plays of that
summer schedule – walk-ons, really – in ‘Oliver’
and ‘La Ronde,’ and I was pleased as punch about
it,” she recalled.
But that was the beginning, because she heeded
the advice of a number of young New York actors
who made up the backbone of the company to go
back to the big city with them, where she
enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic
Arts and trained in the classic plays (“Night
Must Fall,” “Little Moon of Alban”) for her
chance in the profession.
A year ago they were unknowns, but now these
faces are familiar as one of the surprise hits
of 1972-73, “The Rookies,” prepares to move into
its second season. Above, left to right Michael
Ontkean, Sam Melville and Georg Sanford Brown;
below, Kate Jackson, who plays Sam’s wife.
Her first job was one of her more traumatic
experiences, for she hooked on the ABC daytime
serial, “Dark Shadows,” as the girl who has
“terrible things happen to her.”
Off-camera, her life was quite as hectic as
on-camera, for one of the directors “was so mean
to me, I was scared to death of her. I was do
bewildered at first I would try to hide behind
the other actors on the set, to make myself as
inconspicuous as possible.
“Yet, because she was so tough, I really learned
a lot from her. If she ever found out that she
helped me, I think she would kill herself.”
Kate stood it for nine months, then quit the
show and headed for California in her car. She
shopped around for guest shots, got brief
exposure in “Bonanza” and the “Jimmy Stewart
Show,” then made two pilots that didn’t sell,
“Movin’ On” and “The New Healers,” the latter a
show about paramedics that was aired as a “Movie
of the Week” and gave her her first practice at
playing a nurse, which is her vocation in “The
Rookies.”
Her first movie was just an extension of her
daytime soap opera, “Night of the Dark Shadows,”
but her second, “Limbo,” gave her her first
legitimate role, and she was so impressive in it
that Spelling Goldberg Productions pounced on
her the minute she was free of obligations so
she could be installed in the budding police
series, “The Rookies.”
Strangely, she didn’t appear in the pilot, also
aired as an ABC Movie, “because I wasn’t free
then. Another girl played the part of Mike
Danko’s wife. It was a completely different
character. She was a cocktail waitress and
separated from him.
“When ABC bought it as a series, they put me
into it and made me a nurse and a loving
spouse.”
The year has been a happy one and she like the
gang, yet she’s not sure she did the right thing
in taking the part.
“My friends tried to talk me out of it,” she
noted. “They said that if I did a series. I
would be boxed in and labeled as just a TV
actress. We’ll have to see. Part of my deal with
Spelling- Goldberg calls for one
Movie-of-the-Week a year.”
Kate can never remember when she didn’t want to
be an actress. That was part of her life in
Birmingham, Ala. where she was born on Oct.29,
1949, “and Kate is my real name, not Katherine.
That was my grandmother’s name and it was given
to me”. She is distantly related to both Andrew
Jackson and Jefferson Davis, the latter as a
great-great-great-great grandniece.
Daughter of a banker, she did little about her
acting pretensions as a child. “Mainly I just
fantasized about being a celebrity and having
people ask me for autographs, so I would
practice signing my name during the day,” she
smiled.
She would stand around at small theaters where
casting went on, so that “if they needed someone
they could pick me,” she said. “I was usually
there with a boy friend. The same thing happened
later in New York when I went to a ‘Dark
Shadows’ rehearsal with a friend and they put me
into it.”
Kate began college at the University of
Mississippi but never finished. After her
sophomore year she headed north and got her
chance in Stowe, in the summer pf ’69.
Tall and willowy, Kate is the athletic type who
never has to worry about her weight and can eat
anything she wants, including chocolates and
sweets she dotes on. She is such an expert skier
that she has hopes of making the US women’s ski
team for the ’76 Olympics.
She also loves horseback riding, skating, tennis
and dancing. She lives with her two dogs –
cockapoos, she thinks – and her tropical fish in
an apartment in Beverly Hills.
Like her, all the youngsters who make up the
“Rookies” cast were unknowns when the series
went on the air, but are pretty famous today,
thanks to their weekly exposure before millions.
In fact, there was quite a hassle before the
three young male cast members agreed to terms
for the new season. Because of the show’s
popularity, they attempted to hit the producers
for more than the step-rate raise the contract
called for. The dispute was finally resolved,
but not until they had been suspended and
production had been held up for several weeks.
Kate was not involved in the revolt.
Of the trio,
Michael Ontkean, a former New Hampshire hockey
star, has already been profiled in this corner.
Sam Melville, who plays Kate’s husband, Mike
Danko, is a native of Utah who had artistic
talent from boyhood, but transferred from art to
drama in his third year at the University of
Utah and then tried to storm Hollywood on
graduation in 1962. It took him 10 years to do
it.
For a time he did odd jobs, trained in repertory
for three years at San Diego, and got a chance
to go on the road with “Pajama Tops,” but was
stranded in Shreveport and had to hitchhike his
way back.
Another stage assignment, “Camelot,” which he
played in Houston, got him a wife, the former
Ann Ott, daughter of a theater owner in that
city. In recent years he has been seen quite
often in the movies (“Hour of the Gun,” “Thomas
Crown Affair”) and in TV (“Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,”
“Mannix,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “That Girl”).
He and Ann make their home above the Sunset
Strip in Hollywood.
Georg Stanford Brown, who plays the black
officer, Terry Webster, was born in Havana,
moved to New York with his family at 7, got a
chance to knock around the county delivering
cars from one city to another, which brought him
to Los Angeles in 1962, and there he decided to
try acting as a profession, enrolling in drama
courses in both LA and New York.
He began, as so many do, as a spear carrier in a
mob scene at the New York Shakespeare Festival,
graduated to meatier roles in “All’s Well That
Ends Well,” “Measure for Measure’ and “
Macbeth”; returned to Hollywood in 1967 for a
series of TV guest roles: and appeared in such
movies as “The Comedians” with Elizabeth Taylor
and Richard Barton, “Bullitt” with Steve
McQueen” and “God Bless You Uncle Sam” with
James Daly.
He is married to Daly’s daughter Tyne, herself a
budding actress of promise.
By Percy Shain
Transcribed by Christos Spirou for use on The
Rookies Online:
http://www.therookies.gr
For entertainment purpose only. No profit or
copyright infringement intended.
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