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TAYLOR'S EMMY WELL DESERVED
Holland Taylor has been no stranger to television -- viewers or series
-- for more than two decades. She has played in numerous series and has
gained a reputation for professionalism and elevating any part she plays.
Sunday night her talent was richly rewarded with an Emmy for best supporting
actress in David E. Kelley's series "The Practice" which appears
on ABC. In the show, Taylor plays a sex-obsessed judge. Ms. Taylor is
no stranger to Allentown. Although, a native of Philadelphia, she spent
her teen-age years here as a student at the Swain School. Back then people
knew her as Penny Taylor because of her coppery hair. In her professional
career she has become known for her personality, deft comedic touch. In
1990 she described herself as someone "who's been in the mainstream
of American entertainment for 20 years." After winning the Emmy,
she thanked Kelley "for giving me a chariot to ride up here on: A
woman who puts a flag on the moon for women over 40, (she's in her 50s)
who can think, who can work, who are successes, who can cook, and who
can COOK!" She has cooked up quite a career -- one that has taken
her from Broadway to Hollywood films and television. Now it has earned
her an Emmy. Good job.
TAYLOR IS HOPING NBC LEAVES `POWERS'
BE
by SYLVIA LAWLER, The Morning Call
Tomorrow, NBC is expected to announce life or death for its current prime-time
series. The list of retentions so far: "Sisters," "Law
& Order" and "Cheers," to name three that are splendidly
worthy; "A Different World," "Blossom," "Empty
Nest," "Nurses," "Quantum Leap," "Seinfeld,"
"The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Wings," to name
the rest. It will be interesting to learn the night-by-night-placement
of the holdovers. For instance, with "Cosby" gone as its prop
on Thursday nights, can "A Different World" hang in there as
lead-in to "Cheers"? Could it even begin to stand on its own
another night? With "Golden Girls" gone as the safety net from
NBC's Saturday night lineup, will "Nurses" have a life at all?
Does NBC programming chief Warren Littlefield think "Empty Nest"
has the muscle to lead off the night and protect Saturday prime time for
"Nurses" and "The Powers That Be"? Or might Littlefield
billet them all on different nights to downplay the absence of "Golden
Girls?" These are some of the fine points that make covering television
interesting. Another is Holland Taylor, one of the best actresses on television
or anywhere else, whose flamboyant comedy style is one of the high spots
of her current series, Norman Lear's "The Powers That Be." Lear's
send-up of the greedy 1980s and Washington politics hasn't been announced
as a renewal yet but -- wink wink -- is almost sure to be. For former
Allentonian Taylor, a Broadway actress who is ecstatic, thank you, in
her sixth television series, a pickup order can't come soon enough. "I've
never been so happy on a television show. I've been happier in the theater,
which is my natural habitat, but I love being in this show and I worship
Norman Lear. He's wonderful and brilliant and wise and knows better than
most people do about a lot of things, but he's open to suggestion from
anyone. Literally. You find yourself saying, `Norman, don't you think
that ... no, never mind,' and he'll say, `What? What was your thought?'
and he won't let it alone." Taylor says Lear is on the set "a
lot," directing a number of episodes and writing a few as well. On
the series, Taylor is Margaret Powers, the haughty, power-hungry wife
of an affable but ineffectual U.S. Senator played by John Forsythe. Over
the fireplace in their Washington, D.C., home, the ultimate dysfunctional
household, hangs an elegant portrait of Taylor as Margaret. Those who
know that Taylor's mother, Virginia Taylor, is a portrait painter, might
jump to the obvious conclusion but they would be wrong. "I wish my
mother had done it, because my mother is a superb portraitist," Taylor
said by telephone from her West Hollywood apartment recently. "I
wouldn't get to keep it (the portrait) unless the show folded, so let's
hope I don't get to keep it. I'd rather it hung right where it is for
a number of years to come, partly because not to work with this cast any
more would be terrible." She quickly and easily names all her fellow
cast members, including Peter MacNichol as the senator's manic press aide,
Valerie Mahaffey as her recovering anorexic daughter, Robin Bartlett as
the senator's illegitimate daughter, Sophie, and David Pierce as her suicidal
son-in-law. "I wish I could take him home with me every night,"
she laughed. "And I'm married to John Forsythe, and that makes me
pretty happy, too. When he walked in the room, we hadn't known they had
cast him for this role and we literally almost fell off our chairs."
Margaret, of course, is an elegant but nasty, maid-slapping beast and
Taylor, a Philadelphia native who lived her teen years in Allentown and
attended the Swain School (where she was known as Penny Taylor because
of her coppery hair), says she has known many women like her: "I
am angling away from the frozen cliche of the frozen person. I want her
to be a real person who is really selfish in her thinking and superficial
in her take on life. She probably won't learn too many realities about
life, just as Archie Bunker won't learn too many. But Archie was a real
person. "I know this type of woman and I love them and I'm tolerant.
Not politically, because that would speak to their false sense of entitlement,
but I've known plenty of stylish women who are selfish and not that well
versed in the breadth of life on this planet, who are nonetheless charming
and funny and wicked. Margaret doesn't even examine her attitude. She's
just careless and grand." And no, said Taylor, Margaret is not Nancy
Reagan. "The superficial reading of our show is that we are the Reagans,
which we are not. John doesn't do Reagan and my character is not Nancy.
She doesn't have the same kind of background and she doesn't act that
way. There's nothing Bush-like about them, either; nothing Barbara-like
about Margaret. I admire Barbara Bush enormously." While Taylor's
permanent home is in New York City's Greenwich Village, the exigencies
of television demand a bi-coastal existence. In one sense it gets easier,
in another its gets harder, said the 49-year-old actress. Waiting to learn
if "Powers" would be renewed, she busied herself "playing
tennis and exercising with a workout man trying to keep my body about
10 years younger, having a grand time. I have a lot of friends out here
(Los Angeles) now and I'm traveling a lot." Last week it was England;
in July it will be Italy. "And back to Tampa in June to finish a
movie I'm in with Burt Reynolds called `Cop and a Half.'" They got
along famously, both with capacious wells of humor bubbling just under
the surface, she reported. "He's fabulous. He told me he was madly
attracted to me but there was Loni to consider," she laughed. That's
the good part. The back-and-forthing, she says she is handling "less
and less well. I'd like to have some aspects of my life better settled.
But I have a more homelike apartment out here than I'd had in the past.
I have a little more of a life entertaining and enjoying my Italianate
courtyard with its faded elegance." And her maid. On "Powers
That Be," Margaret slaps her hapless maid Charlotte regularly. In
real life, Holland Taylor is besotted with the Guatemalan woman, Carolina
Aguire, "who runs my life in a way I'm totally incapable of doing.
I just want to hug and kiss her."
HOLLAND TAYLOR SHINES AS NURSE IN 'HARRY'
INSIDE TELEVISION
by SYLVIA LAWLER, The Morning Call
If you missed Wednesday's premiere of ''Harry,'' try not to make the same
mistake next week. So the premiere of the new Alan Arkin comedy wasn't
greeted with handstands by most television critics. Grown-ups should know
by now that it takes time for an ensemble company of writers and actors
to mesh gears. But next week's episode is the first in the limited run
that will allow the scintillating Holland Taylor to shine, and among those
you can count on being tuned in will be the actress's father, Attorney
C. Tracy Taylor of Allentown. (Unless the ratings pay off and ABC orders
''Harry'' to series for next season, seven episodes are all there will
be). Taylor, a Philadelphia-born, Allentown-bred strawberry blonde with
strong Broadway credentials, knows her way around a comedy characterization
like nobody's business. She is costar and leading farcical antagonist
to Arkin's ''Harry'' in the actor's coproduction airing at 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays
in the space vacated by Howard Hesseman's ''Head of the Class.'' Arkin
plays the wheeler-dealer maverick head of a hospital supply room. Taylor
is the imperious nurse who digs into his craw and sticks there. The two
were made for each other, but it's Taylor who walks off with the show,
according to those who have seen next Wednesday's episode in which she
fancies she is smitten by Harry, unorthodox manipulations and all. ''That
is the first episode in which I have more than tiny little snippets to
do, quite a lot, in fact,'' said Taylor by telephone from her Greenwich
Village apartment. ''At the beginning, Nurse Duckett was not necessarily
going to be a major character. Her build-up was very much an 11th hour
thing. I was in Los Angeles doing a John Hughes' film, ''She's Having
a Baby,'' and the head writer became very complimentary to me about the
first episode of 'Harry.' He said there wasn't time or room to restructure
the series then, but 'As soon as we're past the first seven, we'll be
using you according to your merits and not your billing.' I'm perfectly
relaxed about the whole thing,'' said Taylor, who sounded it, as we talked
about her rather astonishing, and still building, career which has seen
her star opposite Alan Bates in ''Butley'' on Broadway, and costar with
Kathleen Turner in films ''Romancing the Stone'' and its sequel, ''Jewel
of the Nile.'' (In just one Broadway season a few years back, Taylor stepped
in for Eve Arden to head the cast of ''Moose Murders'' and later drew
glowing personal notices for her starring role in ''Breakfast With Les
and Bess.'' Taylor's has been a career to watch and to follow.) Series
television has yet to showcase her talents properly since her costarring
role a few years back as the officious, flamboyant and funny Ruth Dunbar,
boss to Peter Scolari and Tom Hanks in the oh-so-undervalued ''Bosom Buddies.''
(You can catch them in reruns at 6 p.m. Saturdays on Channel 9.) Taylor
was last seen in a 1985 limited series for ABC called ''Me and Mom,''
which even she and costar James Earl Jones couldn't save. But even that
disaster was worth looking in on because Taylor is one of those rare actresses
who not only never gives a bad performance, but who uplifts mediocrity
by sheer dint of her presence. Taylor did not mind one whit that that
effort, which she calls misguided, never went to series, but she feels
quite differently about ''Harry.'' Recent stories of trouble on the set
were fueled mostly because Arkin and ABC had a different concept of where
''Harry'' should go. Any stress felt, she says (stress that seemed to
reflect itself in comments made by costar Thom Bray to Hollywood columnist
Marilyn Beck in her by-lined column last week), came about because the
writers were understaffed. ''There were only four writers who were practically
driven into the hospital, they were so overworked,'' Taylor said. ''Seven
scripts in nine weeks. I don't know how they did it.'' But you bet, she
is fonder of ''Harry'' than of her detective misadventures in ''Me and
Mom'' with Lisa Eilbacher playing her daughter. ''I felt 'Me and Mom's'
central idea was not going to travel very far. I have no idea to do an
action show, and no fondness for standing around Los Angeles streets in
high heels for 14 hours a day. ''But this show has incredible potential.
It's basically a character comedy as opposed to a situation comedy. It
wouldn't have to be set in a hospital, it could be anyplace. The comedy
lies in how the characters relate to each other.'' She gives high personal
and professional marks to Arkin, with whom strangly enough, she had not
worked before, as well as his wife Barbara Dana who is also in the cast.
Back in New York for a while, Taylor is getting a kick out of seeing encore
reruns of ''Bosom Buddies'' in the important New York market once more.
''Buddies'' has a cultish following made up of people who gladly watch
all 37 episodes over and over again. Only 22 minutes of a standard television
half-hour goes to its drama or comedy; the rest is for commercials. ''But
in syndication,'' Taylor pointed out, ''there are only 17 actual minutes
of story. Syndication cuts out five minutes more for additional commercials,
so you miss the comic tags at the end that I was always in. A lot of fun
has been cut out of them, but they are still tremendous fun.'' She works
both coasts as her work demands, and says that the''madness of back and
forthing'' gets her down from time to time, but that ''The minute I'm
finished work in a television series, I'm home on the milk train again.
I suppose I could do more television if I stayed in California, but I
don't. My California agency has me up for a tremendous number of films.
There is more interest in my having a film career than ever, which is
strange because the stage is the medium for which I have the most personal
attachment . . . ''That I'm up for quite a lot of wonderful supporting
and starring roles is truly an icing on the cake I didn't expect. My career
is going just great, as though it has a life of its own.''
HOLLAND TAYLOR'S SERIES MAY BE IN LIMBO,
BUT SHE'S EN ROUTE TO THE FRENCH RIVIERA
by SYLVIA LAWLER, The Morning Call
Philadelphia-born, Allentown-reared actress Holland Taylor whose ABC limited
series, ''Me and Mom,'' is still in limbo without an air date isn't fretting.
The next boat to come along will be the sequel to the huge movie hit,
''Romancing the Stone,'' in which she'll again play Kathleen Turner's
friend and editor. Turner and Michael Douglas will reprise their roles
in ''Jewel of the Nile,'' too. ''They'll start filming the end of April,
and get the scenes that take place in Morocco out of the way first because
of the heat,'' said Holland, back on the East Coast, but only temporarily.
Then they'll begin shooting on the French Riviera, where Holland's scenes
will be filmed. ''Just think, I get to go to Nice in June,'' said the
dedicated Francophile who has already started polishing up her je ne sais
quois. In the meantime, chances that her comedy-action series ''Me and
Mom'' will debut at the end of this month, as thought earlier, are slim.
''I think we would have heard by now if that were true,'' she says, we
meaning her co-stars James Earl Jones (''a lovely man'') and Lisa Eilbacher.
''We only made six episodes, and we'd have to hear by May if we were going
to be picked up because that would mean going back into production.''
What's different about being constantly on call in an hour-long action
piece like ''Me and Mom'' and Holland's earlier half-hour sitcom, ''Bosom
Buddies,' is manifold, she says. Mainly, it has to do with the demands
on one's energies when there are but three stars as focal points. ''Lisa
and I were in virtually every scene. Your work takes never, never less
than 12 hours a day, and often 16 or 17.''
HOLLAND TAYLOR FILMING SERIES PILOT
by SYLVIA LAWLER
Actress Holland Taylor, who called Allentown home during her high school
days, is shooting a new pilot film for ABC Television. Taylor, who had
a recent Broadway hit in ''Breakfast with Les and Bess,'' and before that
a personal success in the wacky television sitcom, ''Bosom Buddies,''
is filming the 90-minute movie in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In ''Me
and Mom,'' ABC says she plays a madcap woman who goes into a detective
agency business with her daughter, played by Lisa Eilbacher (''An Officer
and a Gentleman,'' ''The Winds of War,'' ''The Patty Hearst Story'') and
her daughter's partner, James Earl Jones (''Roots'' and the short-lived
series, ''Paris''). The good news is that Taylor is such a skilled comedienne,
she ought to be able to carry off ''madcap'' in grand style if the scripts
are at all toothsome. The bad news is that at this time of year, dozens
of pilot films are being shot, not all of which are given air dates. Of
those that do make prime time, fewer still become regular series. But
''Me and Mom,'' which has no air date yet, is definitely a pilot movie
for a possible series. To clarify a point of frequent confusion: the young
actress on-the-rise named Lisa who is from next-door Reading is not Eilbacher,
but Eichorn. Lisa Eichorn, a Mount Penn High School graduate whose parents
still reside in Stony Creek Mills, is remembered best from ''Yanks'' and
''The Wall.'' She is currently starring in ''Golden Boy'' in London's
West End.
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