Greenfield Recorder, Tuesday, July 24,1984
Susan Sullivan She wants to avoid being perfect on Falcon Crest' by JERRY BUCK
Associated Press LOS ANGELES - The soap opera is the devils playground, where the villains have all the fun and the good guys are miserable. But you'll never persuade Susan Sullivan of that. Miss Sullivan stars in CBS' hit opera "Falcon Crest" as Maggie Gioberti, who is good but certainly not goody-goody. That would be carrying goodness too far.
"Maggie and her husband Chase have a unique love going for television," she says. "It's certainly unique for this kind of show. It's much harder to write for the good guys, but I think that would take away something fundamental if we changed. Still, I'd love to see us have a knock-down, drag-out fight, the kind of fight where you make up and go to bed."
The series is about a large family in California's ' Napa Valley, where many of the diverse family members spend as much time plotting intrigue as they do producing wine for the Falcon Crest label. The essential difference, however, comes from the fact that "Falcon Crest" was created by executive producer Earl Hamper, a novelist turned screenwriter who brings to the show the values that made "The Waltons" a family favorite in the 1970s. "I think Earl's influence is such, his integrity, that even the bad guys have a vulnerable side," said Miss Sullivan. "It gives them a reality. So if you're cast as a good guy the first thing you have to do is find your bad guy side. "I think the audience is more sophisticated than people give them credit for. I think people will turn-off a character who is too perfect to be believable."
This Is not the first soap opera for the blonde actress, who worked part-time as a Playboy Club bunny while attending college in New York. First she was in ABCs "A World Apart" and then spent four years in NBC's "Another World." "In 'A World Apart' I played a naive character who* constantly fought with her father," she said. "I would leave the studio with residual anger. And now I play a nice character and some of her — this sounds woowoo." After a silence she added, "Her values are not that different from mine." This past season Maggie had a brain tumor, and Miss Sullivan said she drew heavily on her own experiences during her father's fatal illness three years ago. "He died of cancer and he spent part of his time in a hospice connected to a hospital," she said. "A hospice loosens the hospital visiting restrictions. For instance, you "can even bring pets. My father died at home, which the hospice arranged. I was drawn to the. hospice program and I've become a spokesman for the movement. "So when Maggie had a brain tumor I went to Earl and suggested using a hospice. But they felt that would make it look too grim. So I had a brain tumor, an operation and recovered in four shows."
Many changes are in store for "Falcon Crest" in the new season — after a May ciiffhanger in which the entire cast went down in a plane. It's already well known that Mel Ferrer's character won't survive the crash. In fact he's now at work on a movie for CBS called "Seduced." Cliff Robertson's character is obviously another casualty since Robertson flies to New Zealand this month to work on a movie and in September goes to Tunisia for another film. Maggie, who already has a sister who's a former prostitute, gets a father this fall. "They're looking for someone now," said Miss Sullivan. "I want a very young father. It's disconcerting to play a grandmother at my age, so I need a young father."
Miss Sullivan, who graduated from college in 1966, said she thinks any changes in the fall will be for the best. "You have to have new story lines each year and in order to do that you have to juggle people. It seems cruel, but sometimes it works out best." She herself was juggled out of the ABC comedy "It's a Living" and replaced by Louise Lasser. "ABC felt I was too straight," she said. "That was originally what they wanted, then they felt they needed a more offbeat character. But that wasn't the answer, either." Last April Miss Sullivan played a lesbian dying of cancer on the stage in "Last Summer at Bluefish Cove." Before Miss Sullivan, who is single, left for San Francisco to do the play she had a talk with her costar, Jane Wyman. "Jane told me romance would come when I least expected it," she said. "That's an old cliche. Twenty years ago if anyone had told me I'd be this age and unmarried and with no children I wouldn't have believed them. . "But on the plane I was reading my lines from the play script, and like all actors I'd underlined all my dialogue. Behind me someone said, 'If you underline all the lines you won't know where the "ah has" are.' I turned around to see this handsome, interesting man and we sat together the rest of the trip." She now regularly dates the man, whom she identifies as "Tony, a criminal lawyer." Miss Sullivan has a history of saying- "no" three times to various projects she's done. She turned down a regular role in the ABC series "Rich Man, Poor Man, Book II" three times. She said no to "It's a Living" three times and she said no to "Falcon Crest" three times.. She laughed and said, "It's amazing the way I've turned down things three times before doing them. Tony'd better start asking me to marry him so I can turn him down three times.''
By
Paul Raven ·
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