#360 A Hart to Hart with Stefanie Powers

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

all right, April, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome everybody. It's episode 360 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host. Jeff jawoskin, great to have you back for what's sure to be an episode full of mystery. My guest today is none other than Stefanie Powers, and I have to say, when we met, it was murder. Such a great conversation coming up in just a few seconds, and in these few seconds, do not miss my conversation with Vic Kaplan, legendary producer worked with some of the biggest names in comedy and music and TV. You are going to love that conversation, but right now you're going to love my conversation with Stefanie Powers. We dive into her memoir, one from the heart. We talk heart to heart. We talk girl from Uncle, and, of course, we discuss the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, all that's coming up right now. All right, everyone, I'm excited to introduce my next guest star theater TV and film the girl from Uncle. Heart to Heart. Herbie Rides Again, and so much more. Ah, founder of the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, author of one from the heart, please. Welcome to the show. Stefanie Powers,

Stefanie Powers 1:51

Hello, Jeff. Are you? Are you a Polish? Origin? Your name is, what the bosskin Dwoskin

Jeff Dwoskin 1:58

might be more Russian? Maybe Russian polish, yeah, yeah,

Stefanie Powers 2:02

you'll probably the W mine. So my done my birth certificate. It says Stefania zojia pedir came. Yes, you can understand why they changed it.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:16

How about we go with powers?

Stefanie Powers 2:18

Yeah, there you go. No, well, it was another name for and that one, that one got changed.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:26

Well, yeah, I mean, it's powers, is definitely a lot. I saw that when I was doing the research your polish, original Polish origin name. And yeah, I wasn't even gonna try to pronounce it. But,

Stefanie Powers 2:42

yeah, well, I spoke Polish, actually, before I spoke English, and now I speak it in a really haltingly. It's a very difficult language. I think it. Somebody described it as a language in search of a vowel. You can understand. It's very hard to pronounce, all

Jeff Dwoskin 3:01

right. Well, we'll just, we're just for anyone listening. We're gonna move forward only English. We're doing this whole interview. English,

Stefanie Powers 3:08

Oh, you don't like risky. Don't want to take a chance.

Jeff Dwoskin 3:15

So diving in for an interview. When I get chance, I, you know, I dove into your book. And then you start to, like, find things and like and so sometimes like, you uncover certain things that you didn't know were around. And one of the things that I found, that I loved in researching specifically Heart to Heart was Adam Scott and Amy Poehler did a shot by shot remake. I know they interviewed you guys as well.

Stefanie Powers 3:41

It was fabulous. I mean, they really, they really spared no expense and but they were so spot on. They got the absolute essence of the two characters. Don't you think?

Jeff Dwoskin 3:53

Yeah, it was because I had just watched the openings again, because it's funny, because the theme song to heart to heart. Though, I remembered most of it, the one line that sticks. You know, I give certain lines from certain movies or what have you, that just stick in your head, like, there isn't, like, I bet that month doesn't go by where I won't see people, two people together. And in my head, I go, because when they met, it was murder for No, yeah, that's like, the line is just, it's like, the way he says murder is just like,

Stefanie Powers 4:26

and Lionel did it so well, didn't he so well?

Jeff Dwoskin 4:29

I think so well. Because I realized in watching some of the season one of heart to heart that the opening is slightly different, the narration is slightly different. I think it's like their hobby was murder, but they're like, oh, they must have loved the way he said murder, because it kept getting rewritten. With they didn't lose that murder. No, with his voice, loved

Stefanie Powers 4:48

it. They said they they changed it. Really. I thought it was always and when they met, it was murder.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:54

No, if you go watch the first season like it says, because they're hot, it's something about, like, their hobby. His murder. Yeah, because I was like, Oh, wow, because I all of a sudden I thought, am I having a Mandela effect that

Stefanie Powers 5:04

doesn't sound as good now, that certainly doesn't sound as good. No, when they met, it was your intro

Jeff Dwoskin 5:10

got a little different too, because yours was a little more simple, and then eventually became, this is Miss H she's gorgeous, and she's one lady that knows how to take care of herself. And I that line wasn't in the original one either. I

Stefanie Powers 5:23

know that that I never cared for that one either.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:27

But the shop for shot remake was incredible. That

Stefanie Powers 5:30

was very funny. They were really, really good. Yeah, we got a big kick out of it.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:36

That was super fun to just accidentally discover. All right, so there's so much I have, like,

Stefanie Powers 5:44

I've been around a long time,

Jeff Dwoskin 5:46

notes about notes can work our way back up to heart to heart. I mean, super impressed. I mean, of all the famous, famous people that you've worked with, would you put HERBIE, the love bug right at the top? Because I was so impressed. Well,

Stefanie Powers 6:03

her, you know, it was very interesting. I had done, I was under contract to Columbia Pictures when I was 16. I worked with Jimmy MacArthur, whose mother happened to be the first lady of the American theater. You know, that's a pretty daunting title to have, but Jimmy was, you know, never, you know, affected by any of that. So here we were walking on a sound stage where the First Lady of the American theater is going to act beside a Volkswagen car. So I thought, well, if she can do it, so can I? I mean, she was delighted to be doing that film because it reached a whole new audience, and audience she'd never reached before, and she couldn't really, she said she couldn't really work again in the theater because of the dust that it affected her so so badly that she really found it so much better to work in film on film, but I asked her again whether or not that was true, because we spent weeks on the soundstage at Disney Studios. You know, they had perfected. They were one of the first companies that ever did a combination of live action and animation, and they perfected a kind of it wasn't a green screen. Wasn't the blue screen, it was a kind of yellowish, Cyan colored screen that they perfected. And what they would do is they would have 235 millimeter cameras slapped together, and they would be simultaneously going through filming while this the The film went through the camera and was exposed in this light. One had us only with the no background, and the other camera had us cut out. It kind of cut out of us so it could get the background and not us. It was very complicated, obviously, by today's standards, because we think of everything as being digitalized, and so it's all instant, instant mashed potatoes, you know? But then this was such an incredible technology, but it was very difficult to work with, because you couldn't move from side to side, so you had to be pretty much stationary, and then they would do one or two lines of dialog, and then you'd have to move to another position, and then you could do one or two lines of dialog in that position. So even as difficult as that was, she found it enjoyable.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:42

It sounds like a fascinating process of how they shot that. So it's not so the car really couldn't do all that.

Stefanie Powers 8:48

So sorry. No, I hate to well, you're illusion. No, no,

Jeff Dwoskin 8:54

no, we better not talk about Santa. That was, that was really cool. So I, anyway, I love that it was, it was nice the villain in that was interesting because it was like, Keenan Wynn. Keenan Wynn. Keenan Wynn, yes, because his character was also in son of Flubber and the absent minded professor. It was interesting that, like back then, that they were still kind of doing those crossovers. So he was, like the bad guy in all the films. Yes, there

Stefanie Powers 9:25

was typecasting. Very much. Typecast. You know, it was really interesting, because Kenan was, he was a wild man. He was a great motorcycle enthusiast, and he would ride to work and everywhere on this motorcycle with a side car. Sometimes you'd have somebody in it. Sometimes it wouldn't be and side cars very dangerous, you know, it's, you have to really know what you're doing. And later on, I did another film with him, you know, so we he was a known quantity, and it was really quite, quite an eccentric, never really very. Very much like the the characters he played,

Jeff Dwoskin 10:02

I find, like a lot of people I talk to are like, you know, like, if they're very specific type of characters, sometimes they're the exact opposite in real life, like, especially if they're like, evil people, then they're usually the nicest people. Larry, Ken Barry,

Stefanie Powers 10:18

yes, Ken Barry, who was. And I never think, and I think he never really was used. His timing was bad, because the great period of the of the movie musical where he could have sung and tap danced, which was one of the things he did best of all, he was a great song and dance man, but he he was hired more as a comedian on film and a television so I never really got to show his real talent. He was in something called the Billy Barnes review, which played in in the theater for years and years and years there was, there were several casts that, but I think Diane Worley, or Worley, what? What was her first what's her first name? Diane Worley, is it? Diane? Yeah, Diane Worley, she I think she was in, in the Billy Barnes review, Ken was in the Billy Barnes review, the woman who became his wife was in the Billy Barnes it was an incredible it was kind of, I suppose you might call it LA's version of Second City. What Second City was to Chicago, the Billy bonds review was to Cal, to LA. I

Jeff Dwoskin 11:29

remember from Mama's family also, all right, your memoir, one from the heart the I dove into that. So it's so you say you were at Columbia at 16, so 15, you talk about, like, starting to dance, and you're quite a dance crew, and Natalie Wood was in there as well. It's like, so you move fast, like you were discovered right away.

Stefanie Powers 11:54

I guess you might say, so, yes, yeah. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 11:58

one minute you're dancing, the next minute you're right, meeting with Blake Edwards, and then experiment and terror. And then that led to the your seven years at Columbia. Yes, yes. 15

Stefanie Powers 12:08

movies in five years. I was, I was at Columbia for five years. They loaned me out, and so I did about three movies a year. I

Jeff Dwoskin 12:17

wanted to ask you about the loan out thing. So they when you're on contract, they just own you like you are. It's like a set price. We're paying UX amount so that you could be making $400 a week, or whatever. They could loan you out for a million dollars, and they could make a million. I was making

Stefanie Powers 12:34

$400 a week. I was that's exactly what my salary was. And then they would loan me out to different studios to do different roles, and they were paid a much higher some, and not quite a million dollars, but they were paid a much higher sum, and I still got my $400 a week. Okay,

Jeff Dwoskin 12:57

so they were able to recoup their costs with you, or they could make money off of you. That

Stefanie Powers 13:02

was the system at the time. They did own you. And so when they decided that they got an offer from MGM, and after about five years to buy me out of my contract, if they would sell me, sell me to MGM, to do the girl from Uncle. So they sold me, and I really didn't. I didn't really have anything to say about it. Actually, I was quite happy, because the girl from uncle was a fantastic opportunity. I'd never done television. I'd done one or two guest shots in my hiatus period. I had never done a television series, and I'd never done television in those days, which was, you know, we was rather cumbersome. Today, we have technology that makes it possible, if you can use the technology to film a lot in one day, we had a 35 millimeter film camera that needed lights and the film was slower. We had 14 hour days every day. We would turn out an hour show every seven days, and we filmed 29 episodes each season. Can you imagine? That's a lie, 29 episodes in the season today, they can barely. I mean, 810, what is it? Eight? Eight episodes for some of the streaming shows?

Jeff Dwoskin 14:31

Yes, six, sometimes only six. Yeah, it's six to eight, maybe 10.

Stefanie Powers 14:35

In spite of all of the AI and all the CG and all of that that's available. They still don't. They're not able to quite make it happen. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 14:46

you guys worked your butts off and made it happen. So we did the girl from Uncle. So we April dancer. This was a spin off of the man from on call. And,

Stefanie Powers 14:58

you know, at the time, nobody made. A big deal about this. But it was only until, you know, years and years and years later, when somebody was saying, we're going to have a retrospective of the pioneer the television. Would you join us? And I said, Well, I'm hardly a pioneer. And they said, Oh no, no no, the girl from Uncle was the first hour long television series starring a woman ever Can you imagine that that's amazing? We didn't. It wasn't even an issue. It was just, that's the way it was, and, and, I mean, think of all the things we could have cap for the line star. So

Jeff Dwoskin 15:35

nobody realized it. You didn't realize it at the time. It was only years later when they kind of said, Hey, by the way, you're a groundbreaker. That's it. Oh, man. So this was originally in The Man from UNCLE set up as one of those back door pilots. So Marianne Mobley was April dancer, and Norman fell was Mark slave, Mr. Roper.

Stefanie Powers 15:57

Mr. Roper, yes, well, and you know, Mary Ann was a neighbor of mine. She lived about three houses away, and we became very, very good friends later in life. We sorted it out, you know, I said, Look, it wasn't, wasn't my choice. I wasn't trying to get your job. That's when it was the studios did this and that. And of course, she understood it To the sweetest, loveliest lady who was Miss America at one point, wow, and she fought her cancer brilliantly. She had two dogs, and we would walk our dogs together. I had three dogs. When she died, her daughter's husband didn't want to take the dogs because they bar. I said, get rid of him and take the dogs. I mean, how ridiculous. So I said, without question, bring the dogs to my house, because my dogs, we'd walk together so my dogs knew them. So suddenly I had five dogs, and I still have one of them. That's wonderful. That's so awesome. He was one of the dogs that was barking when you called me or I called we hooked up that belonged to Mary Ann.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:07

That's a great story, and you're awesome. That's really cool. That's really cool. I remember the first dog my wife and I got from the Humane Society, and was this big dog, English Springer Spaniel, Collie mix, beautiful, and just kind of sat there and looked at us and snuggled with us. And it was like, Oh, this is our dog. And we get home, never stop barking. Like, knew not to bark until we got him home. But we kept him. We kept him. Don't worry. I was looking at the girl from Uncle and, oh, by the way, like, um, sometimes I was just talking of Lynn moody, and she was one of the original she was, she was in the backdoor pilot for the Jeffersons and all in the family. And none of them in the backdoor pilot, none of those characters that we became, that we all know now is the Jeffersons and all the character, none of them were the characters from the from the pilot. Yeah. Pilot, yeah. I mean, so it's,

Stefanie Powers 18:00

they were completely recast, yeah, yeah, almost, yeah. So that happened along, I guess, yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 18:06

that's what I say. Like, it's probably wasn't, you know, they probably do it, forget it, and then, you know, they start the real casting girl from Uncle. It was interesting because it was like, this is a product of its time. I would like TV Guide. You were on the cover of TV Guide, and you can correct me if there's wrong, because, you know, I only trust the internet is so far right. But it was like, it referred to your weight and then said that you keep at this weight by doing 11 minutes of Royal Canadian Air Force exercise daily, and exercise daily. And I was like, I mean, it makes sense that they would say it at that time, because I think that's what they did, but it's horrible, but it was just, it was just so nobody, it's true. Is it true? Yeah,

Stefanie Powers 18:47

heard of the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises.

Jeff Dwoskin 18:50

No doubt. Never say that about a guy. Probably, right. They would never, well,

Stefanie Powers 18:54

they wouldn't say how what he weighed, or anything they would today, probably, but the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises were and still are, an extraordinary way to stay in shape. All right, that's a good idea. I haven't thought about that in a long time. I haven't done them in a long time. I don't know if I'm fit enough to be able to do them, but it is an 11 minute workout, and you really do work. All right, well, I guess I'm going to check it out. Then, yes, do. I'm glad I brought Canadian Air Force exercise.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:23

All right, all right, all right. So you were John Wayne's daughter. That's awesome. And McClintock, yeah, I was thrilled with that one. You loved westerns. I read that in your book, and so that must have been amazing to then work with and be John Wayne's daughter in a movie

Stefanie Powers 19:40

well, and Maureen O'Hara, let's not forget Maureen O'Hara, yes, yes. And all the people, all the people that were in that movie, that great cast of characters, you know, I was, I was talking to somebody the other day, Rob Ward, who you should interview, because he's a man who sort of keeps you. He's the keeper of the flame of the Western movies. He has an archive, and he interviews everybody about who's been in western movies. And we were talking about it, and he was going to see Patrick Wayne that day, and I said, Well, give Patrick my love. Isn't it amazing that the two of us are the only ones left alive from that film. It was a privilege to be working with those people. They were all of that period. They were in every, every, every possible John Ford movie, and Andy McLaughlin, who was Victor McLaughlin, son, was directing it. Patrick Wayne was in it, and Michael Wayne was producing it. So it was really a kind of family unit. It was quite I've never had that experience before or since, because everybody had something to do with Joan Ford, who did come for a few days to take over when Andy mcglotlin got sick, and let me tell you that one. It's in the book. I think I have a detailed description of what it was like when he arrived. It was, it was a, was a full production.

Jeff Dwoskin 21:13

I think you said you were relieved that you weren't in any of those scenes that day. Yeah,

Stefanie Powers 21:17

I was sort of hiding.

Jeff Dwoskin 21:22

Too funny. You mentioned Cliff Robertson a lot. I've always loved Cliff Robertson. You mentioned Roddy McDonald a lot. There's a whole I know you worked with

Stefanie Powers 21:30

Clifford and I did quite a few movies together, quite a few TV mini series together, Washington, behind closed doors, was one of them. I think that was one of the beginning of the long form TV series. It was very successful. And he had known me since we did the interns movie when I was just under contract. I think it was the second film, the second movie I did, Clifford and I first met on the set of the interns and he was this, I had loved the movie picnic. So to me, he was this, of course, I was in love with William Holden before I was in love with William Holden. So that movie was, it was just breathtaking. So I was very impressed with him. And he was, you know, kind of I was a kid, so then we did another movie together, and and then over the years, we became such good friends, and he wound up calling his daughter Stephanie. Oh, so that was nice.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:33

That's awesome. That's really cool. He must have liked you so much. Well, I liked him too. Oh, there was the movie. It's funny. When I was reading the book, I was like, Oh, I didn't realize Stefanie wasn't. Gone With the Wind, you weren't. But the I kept reading, Gone with the West for so Gone With the Wind, yeah. Some reason my was my eyes were scanning, and my brain just filled it in, yeah, but gone with the West, with James Conn and Samuel, Sammy Davis Jr and but I wanted to actually ask you about seeing Don Rickles

Stefanie Powers 23:10

funny. Oh, god, that was so funny. We were, we were all billeted this entire movie company at a downtown hotel. And in those days, the downtown hotels were kind of on the lower end of things, but our production company made a deal, and so we were all billeted there, and Jimmy invited me to meet Rickles. We were supposed to go and see his show, but we were working late, so we didn't make it. We had to go back and at least shower and change, because we're out dusty, dirty and all of that. So we met him in the coffee shop of Caesar's Palace, this grand hotel, and as we walk in, Rickles, booming voice from the back of the coffee shop says, Oh, there they are, James Kahn and Stefanie Powers big stars staying at the Mint.

Jeff Dwoskin 24:10

Don Rickles is the funniest person in the world.

Stefanie Powers 24:13

Oh, God, he was great, and he was a sweetheart also. I mean, once again, as you say, some dogs the villains are the nicest people. Well, the comedians. Comedians are very special people. Don was, you know, his stock in trade was to insult you lovingly with humor. But as a person, he was a pussy cat. He was a lovely, lovely man, and his wife was just great. I knew his wife when she was ran the office of an agent and an agency that I was under contract to. This was a very small town at one time, if you were in the business under contract or part of the firmament, everybody knew everybody. And there. Everybody's paths criss cross. A lot of people were married to each other. I mean, everybody married each other and everybody but I think it always was a very, very small world. Now it's a lot larger, you know, because there's so many more people and and that tradition is not there. You know, people don't come into the business through the studio system, so they learn it in a very different way.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:25

Sorry to interrupt. Had to take a quick break. I do want to thank everyone for the support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors, you're supporting us here at Classic conversations, and that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my conversation with Stefanie Powers. So of the things you learn when reading a book, since you, I know you didn't have it for very long, but one of the very first voices of HAL in 2001 is Space Odyssey. I love that story. That was great. Yeah.

Stefanie Powers 25:54

I mean, what happened was that Stanley Kubrick, he had a voice he wanted Hal, the computer to have, which was, what's the word I'm looking for, this androgynous There you go. The studio. MGM, back in Los Angeles, was trying desperately to have a word or two, an opinion that was going to be listened to by Stanley, who was making that this phenomenal film that nobody at MGM understood. So they said the voice was too gay. So in those days, that was an issue. So he said, In retaliation, I was on the set a lot. So he said, and he knew I was an actor. So he said, You, you know, rehearse with them. You play Hal and rehearse with them. And then they recorded it. And then I was immediately fired, and he got this wonderful baritone voice of a classical, British, classically trained actor called Nigel Davenport, who was wonderful. It is a very, very, very, very low and rich voice. And he did it for a day, and he was fired. And then Stanley got the voice he wanted, which is the androgynous voice that you hear in the movie today.

Jeff Dwoskin 27:13

What could have been or could have been, ah, yes,

Stefanie Powers 27:16

but anyway, it was all I could say. It was. It was such a privilege to to be around that setting, to have known Stanley for at least as much as I did. I'm still in touch with his widow, who, of on her own, is an extraordinary painter, and Stanley is buried on their property in England.

Jeff Dwoskin 27:39

Oh, wow. It's amazing that you were just, you were there and got to witness some of that. I mean, that's just, that's one of the most iconic movies of all time,

Stefanie Powers 27:47

and it's so innovative. I mean, it's very it's important for to always remind people that when they see that, and they look at the spaceship, and they see all the readouts in the spaceship and the in the centrifuge wheel, and they see the screens reflecting all this digital readout. It didn't exist. There was nothing digital that was done through animation, that was done by a special effects genius called Doug Trumbo, and it was projected through a 16 millimeter projector into the set. When you think about the ingenuity that Stanley all the innovations that he employed, it's quite astonishing, and it's so much better if, before anybody sees this film, if they can put some kind of a disclaimer saying, please understand that this movie was made before digitalization existed, or computers of any kind,

Jeff Dwoskin 28:46

I find that, like some of that ingenuity and some of the practical effects, they just they make it better, those movies that do those things well, are some things can be too CGI or too digitized, and it

Stefanie Powers 29:00

oh my god. And I just saw a demonstration of the new digitized background sets that can be made that will move with you. So if you're walking along a street, you won't know the difference between if you're in Paris or not in Paris, because they can have people moving in the background, and it will move with you. So it's all you. You don't ever need to go to Paris. You don't. That's never going to be a factor anymore.

Jeff Dwoskin 29:29

So I'm going to Paris in a little bit. So I'm still going to go, but like, because my wife is going to really want I can't, I don't think I can tell her, like, Hey, honey, we can just project it around that. We can project it. We could talk to the money, actually, that probably more expensive,

Stefanie Powers 29:44

and bring take up the sin, and they eat your take up. Oh,

Jeff Dwoskin 29:49

man, should we jump into? Oh, you know what I wanted to ask you first, before we get into heart to heart, the phenomenon of the 70s tennis, pro celebrity tennis tournaments and. It's just funny when you paint things in like, oh, this was a thing. We did these things, and it was, it was a thing. I

Stefanie Powers 30:07

even played a charity game, a doubles charity game in the Albert Hall in London with VJ Armitage as my my partner. So it was a celebrity pro tennis tournament for charity, but we were inside the Albert Hall. They they took out the movable orchestra seats and put a tennis court. I don't know if you've ever been in the Albert Hall, but it's one of the most iconic buildings of London, and it's a magnificent space where concerts are done, and I've performed twice in in the Albert Hall, and it's an amazing, amazing space.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:47

Oh, wow, that's that sounds awesome. So I

Stefanie Powers 30:51

was playing, but yes, they're just so good.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:55

We should get those charity things to come back now they would. Now, I think it would

Stefanie Powers 30:59

be fun. They were, they were really fabulous. Was great fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:03

I think it would be fun to watch Charlton Heston play tennis, and you play

Stefanie Powers 31:08

and you meant he was a wonderful tennis player. Clint Eastwood, good tennis player. I

Jeff Dwoskin 31:13

can see it. That would be fun. Okay, so speaking of fun, let's talk about the iconic Jennifer Hart. All right, so you're doing a play. They're now de Bergerac with Stacey Keech. Just like anything, when all good things are happening, they tend to pile on each other at the same time. So then they come to you with this idea that they want you for heart to heart as well. Aaron Spelling, who, at this time, pretty much owns everything, right? And everything is Aaron Spelling,

Stefanie Powers 31:39

right. Aaron Spelling, and Leonard Goldberg was his partner. They had so many successful shows in prime time television for ABC that used they used to call it Aaron. ABC wasn't America's Broadcasting Corporation. It was Aaron's Broadcasting Corporation. But the phone call came from my friend Tom Mankiewicz, who had rewritten the original concept and changed a few things, and Robert Wagner, whom I had worked with before, and Aaron, who I knew because he coached our baseball team. We used to have a celebrity baseball team as well. All the young actors would get together, we play we played softball, a softball league. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody gets together. They get together and take drugs, I guess, but they don't get together and play baseball. So they called me and we were, we were in San Francisco. We were about to open in San Francisco, on our way to Broadway as a sort of out of town opening in Cyrano. And they offered this pilot, was a pilot of heart to heart. And Aaron said, Well, look, you know that they're saying there's a threat that there's going to be a newspaper strike in New York. And of course, when there's a newspaper strike in New York, nobody in the theater prospers from this because a new show can't get the publicity out for a new show. So nobody wants to open during a newspaper strike most of the time, it has very damaging effects to all the entertainment venues, because you can't publicize anything. So, as it turned out, so Aaron said, let's see what happens with the strike. All I could say is, I'm extremely happy and that there was a strike, though I could leave the guest of Cyrano and go on to do the pilot Park. Amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 33:38

So your friend Tom so he writes, he rewrites double twist that was the script that was around before,

Stefanie Powers 33:45

right? And he added the dog and he added the Lionel made it much more of a sort of thin man type of relationship, right?

Jeff Dwoskin 33:53

And Tom had written, like, three James Bond movies too, or like,

Stefanie Powers 33:57

yes, but he'd never directed. He was sort of the reluctant debutant. And so the only reason that there was this, you must rewrite this, but you also have to direct it. Everybody was pushing for him to direct, because he was a natural, and he did direct it brilliantly. He directed a lot of our shows. But then he was offered a movie, and did I? He went his first film, guanza. Mind you, he had rewritten Superman. He rewrote all kinds of of movies, but his first, the first film he directed, was dragnet with Tom Hanks and Dan Akron. I saw that. Yeah, hilariously funny. So send up on, on everything. Then he worked with John Candy. They did a they did a movie together, and he went on from there,

Jeff Dwoskin 34:44

awesome. So once you filmed the pilot, how long did you know before it was picked up?

Stefanie Powers 34:49

Oh, that's a good question. I think it must have been a couple of months. Must have been when something

Jeff Dwoskin 34:55

like that happens and you film a pilot. Do you are you under contract to have to wait a particular amount of time? Time, in case it does get picked up.

Stefanie Powers 35:01

Well, it's different now than it was then. Clearly, you were sort of obliged to not make any other pilots until it either sold or didn't sell.

Jeff Dwoskin 35:11

Okay, so, but you got the power of spelling behind you. When did it become a hit? Because the first season it didn't blow up, but eventually it became a big, big show started

Stefanie Powers 35:21

slowly, and because of the weight of spelling and Goldberg, it wasn't cut, you know, halfway through the first season, as sometimes happens with shows that are a runaway success. And so by the end of the season, we were picking up bigger, bigger, bigger and bigger audiences. So we went into the second season with already a larger audience waiting to see us. Then we started to fly awesome.

Jeff Dwoskin 35:50

I read initially they maybe wanted Cary Grant instead of Robert Wagner, but he was maybe too old for the role. And then there were a few other potential Jennifer hearts,

Stefanie Powers 36:02

well, I don't think that's actually right, because somebody may have made that up. Okay, because Robert Weidner and Natalie Wood had a deal with spelling and Goldberg, and part of that deal was X amount of movies for television that they would do for that enterprise and their company. And then they presented, They dusted off this old piece of property that they own, which was called Double Twist, and they had hit the RJ read it as a potential for maybe he and Natalie to do as part of their deal. But Natalie didn't want to do that, felt it would be better. And then Tom was a great friend of both of theirs, so that all got into the mix, and that's how it got layered. But in the beginning, the network was thinking, Ah, Robert Wagner and Lindsay Wagner, heart to heart, and Wagner and Wagner, but our RJ and and Tom championed me and and that's how I got the job,

Jeff Dwoskin 37:04

and the rest is history. That such amazing chemistry you guys have.

Stefanie Powers 37:10

We still do. We can still make each other laugh. I saw him yesterday. He saw

Jeff Dwoskin 37:14

him yesterday. That's awesome, yeah, because then you did the love letters together too, right? And after the heart to heart era, or before the movies. The hearts heart movies, I love it. Well,

Stefanie Powers 37:24

we did about 500 performances of love letters. We opened it in England. There were riots in the street outside the theater. The police had to be called. It was really quite interesting. We were in Canada. We in England, we, we were in Hawaii. We we traveled a lot with that show. It

Jeff Dwoskin 37:44

must be great just to be able to travel and work with someone who you get along with so well, yes, it's great. It's, it's wonderful. Lionel standard. Tell me about Max. You know his history, don't you? Yeah, there was the the American Committee, or un American Committee, and

Stefanie Powers 38:01

oh no, no, there before that. That sort of becomes his epitaph, but that really was not nearly as great as his other achievements were, although it was iconic, what she said, and we'll go it's still in the in the records, the Congressional records. And he was absolutely right. It was a brilliant statement, but it got him blackballed, and so he wound up going to live in Italy because he'd been offered a movie in Italy. And in those days, there were lots and lots of well, they used to call them runaway productions, but they really weren't running away so much as they were running to the source of funding. Because in those days after the Second World War, all the countries in Europe had currency control, so you couldn't take any currency out of the country. Had to stay and remain in the country. So foreign investment, or foreign products, the revenue from these foreign products, couldn't be repatriated. So money was building up in. The studio's money was building up overseas. So all of a sudden there were, there was this pot of money to help finance other movies, and that was the way they could repatriate the funds that were locked in in each one of those country. That's kind of how Lawrence Arabia was financed. How so many movies Cleopatra was financed with frozen funds. Goes on and on and on. But that was, that was the climate of the day, and there were lots of Wildcat investors who were willing to put up some frozen funds for movies, and in Italy, of course, they were brilliant, absolutely brilliant filmmakers, Fellini, Vittorio De Sica Visconti, all of those amazing, fabulous directors. So to carry on with Lionel, so Lionel did I? I think over the years, I think he did some astonishing number of films in Italy. Not the least, was a of which was an incredibly good film that Roman Polanski directed with Catherine de nerve sister in it Francois delac. And it was called cul de sac. It was and one of those great, great movies that should always be viewed as for film. Ducey at so Lionel had an incredible he also was the king of the Via Veneto. He lived with two blonde Swedish girls, and he have everywhere he went. He had his little twins on either side. And even the amazing character, he

Jeff Dwoskin 40:43

lived it up. Sounds like so heart to heart gets canceled, kind of out of nowhere after the fifth season. There's some changes at the at the network, at the network, but then 10 years later, you're able to through these Heart to Heart reunion movies. It

Stefanie Powers 41:00

was less than 10 years. I think it was about 505, years, okay, that was about five years later. So

Jeff Dwoskin 41:06

five years later, did it felt good to kind of revisit and kind of, oh yes,

Stefanie Powers 41:10

it was very much. I think you were about to say, put a period at the end of a sentence, and it was very much. So we did eight two hour movies.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:20

That's a lot. I mean, I mean, in terms of, like, there was a period where they were doing a lot of reunion movies, but that's like, almost like they brought you back as a as an ongoing series. I know it was part of originally that, that kind of mystery wheel, I read your book and so, yeah, but, I mean, but that's, I mean, that's almost a whole season right there. Yeah, in today's world, yes, yeah, that's amazing. So all right. So even more amazing, let's talk about it. Also amazing is the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, which you founded. So

Stefanie Powers 41:49

I had the great experience of spending the last 10 years of his life with Bill Holden. William Holden, Bill was very much an adventure. He loved to do travel. He loved to all his life, he was going to interesting places, wild places that are not, you know, kind of up a river and with a lot of bugs, things, which I love to do as well. So we shared that, that thirst and curiosity and traveled a great deal together. His involvement in East Africa in Kenya began in the mid 50s, when he went out there as a hunter with two friends, when the game was prolific and no one ever thought that any there'd ever be anything called an endangered species. The three of them decided to buy a hotel because they were all living in Switzerland at the time, and this was very accessible to them, to go to this wonderful place, the flora and the fauna and the people were wonderful and and in can you imagine, in those days, the population was only 9 million people, so the whole country was like a playground. And so soon after he was began to spend more time there. He realized that there was going to be a crisis. He was very he was a visionary, because in those days, before anybody had the word conservation in their vocabulary, or indeed extinction bill, created the first ever game ranch for the preservation of species. He bought the 2000 acres that surrounded the property where the hotel was and turned it into a game branch for the preservation of the species that were once being hunted. And that was the first one in the whole of Africa, let alone you know, when you think about how innovative it was, probably going back all those years, it was pretty rare for that thinking to cause somebody to devote that amount of territory to wildlife. I was already I was very much an animal person because I had been raised by a stepfather who raised horses and collected exotic animals, and so it was nothing for me to rescue a baby bear from a pet shop in West Hollywood. Pretty interesting that opened the world to me of wildlife rehabilitation that was going on, or at least the attempt for wildlife rehabilitation and certainly the care of wild animals. That was a great world, and I never stepped out of it. So when Bill and I, when Bill took me to East Africa with him, you know, I was already in love with the man. So it was very easy to fall in love with what he loved, because I loved it too. When he died, he had always wanted to build a wildlife Education Center for local people to back up the specific preservation that was ongoing at the Mount Kenya Game Ranch. And so that that component, that education, component, Part. The puzzle I created after his death. We currently serve our all on first of all, let me say that our mission statement is wildlife conservation through education and alternatives to habitat destruction and so today and for the bulk of the period of time that our doors have been open for free to indigenous people only. We have serviced 10 to 11,000 students a year for all these years since 1982 and we received our IRS status as a public charity. We now have an outreach program, which we've had for a number of years, that goes into rural communities. So we're very much in the front lines of the human animal crisis, the confrontation between tribal areas and wildlife. And so that's we serve. There an additional 7000 people, or six and a half 1000 people. So that's another sort of community activity, or at least in the wild, or what's left of the wild. And our agricultural programs, as alternatives to the habitat destruction are reaching a very interesting juncture, because we're now able to create soil regeneration and the regeneration of property that had been over chemicalized for small share shareholding farmers, so that We can accelerate this process of regenerative soil and therefore farming techniques in one growing season, which is unheard of. It's very exciting work. I spend the bulk of my life there. I've invested a bulk of my life and my where, where with all there. It's an extraordinary gift to be able to share these these misinformation and these technologies with people who desperately need it, and with environments that are very fragile and in need of help.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:14

That's amazing. I love that. I'll put a link to the W, h, w, f.org, thank you in the show notes, and anyone can head over there too. And I imagine there's a way to give and help support this amazing cause. You're a super wonderful person. I thank you, and I know you're being honored in agents of change award for this work as well, and it's just like, it's just the real reward is, is also just all the amazing good that you're doing and it's coming from it.

Stefanie Powers 47:49

The real reward is there with people who are in the front lines. You know, my nails are short and dirty usually. So being in the field is where the work is done and where it's needed and where I love to be.

Jeff Dwoskin 48:04

Thanks for spending time with me and sharing all this and lightening us with the work that you're doing and all the cool stories that you shared. Appreciate you. Thank you. Jeff. All right. How amazing was Stefanie Powers. She's so awesome. Definitely check out her memoir, one from the heart. Definitely look up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation. All the links are in the show notes. So many great stories that conversation just flew by. Well, one more huge thank you to Stefanie Powers and, of course, a huge thank you to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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