Date and Issue: Daytimer Special Issue 44, Winter 1984.

Pages: 9 pages.

Pictures: 8 black and white picture of Lynda Carter (one of them from Partners in Crime) and 6 black and white pictures of Loni Anderson.

Article: Insert reviewing the series, article on Loni Anderson and Partners In Crime and article on Lynda Carter.

Author: Arlene Starr, Aggie Anuniacion.

Country: USA.

	PARTNERS IN CRIME
	(Saturday, 9-10 p.m.) Despite the much-publicized rumors of ego troubles behind-the-scenes. NBC promises as we go to press that the plenary pair comprised of Loni (WKRP) Anderson and Lynda (Wonder Woman) Carter are indeed set to appear "-weekly as owners of a private investigation agency. It seems that both ladies were once married to a man, who for reasons we hope will be explained, leaves them the agency upon his demise. Carter is "Carole Stanwyck," a photographer who used to hobnob with other wealthy debutantes, while Anderson portrays "Sydney Kovak" a talented beauty who overcame poor beginnings to become a concert musician. When the pair learn of their inheritance, rather than sell the business, they decide to ditch their respective careers and take on their first case-namely.
	The murder of their late husband. Whether or not the ladies will be gun-toting private eyes a la Police-woman is moot. Presumably, most of the criminals will be too stunned by their glamour to speak, much less run away.
	COVER STORY: LONI ANDERSON
	Ever since she burst on the scene as the breathy-yet-brainy platinum blonde in WKRP In Cincinnati a while back, Loni Anderson, movie roles and a dragged-through-the-tabloids, on-and-off romance with Burt Reynolds (which, by the way, is very much "on" at press time). Her new series, Partners in Crime, promises to keep her in newsprint even longer. Although rumors of backstage feuds and directorial problems have plagued the series since its pilot was shot, all is now quiet, and Loni is looking forward to her role as a glamorous, street-smart amateur sleuth.
	It's an age old question-does art imitate life or does life imitate art? By casting Loni Anderson as a private investigator in the trouble plagued Partners in Crime, NBC's new tongue-in-cheek mystery series, it seems that art is definitely imitating life.
	You see, Loni loves reading Agatha Christie mysteries. Who could be more natural than an avid, amateur mystery fan to portray a lady TV sleuth? Of course, Loni has other qualifications for the job besides gumshoeing literature's criminal element.
	Loni plays Sydney Kovak, a resourceful, concert musician from poor beginnings who struggled to perfect her musical abilities while being married part of that time to the owner of a San Francisco private investigation agency. After his mysterious death, sometime after their divorce, he leaves the business in the capable hands of his ex-wives, Sydney and Carole Stanwyck, played by co-star Lynda Carter. (Read more about Lynda on page 28.)
	In her own life, Loni enjoys listening to classical music and has put in a fair amount of time studying piano, just like Sydney. For an added touch of authenticity, Loni signed up for a refresher course not only at the piano but also the bass. And because the series takes place in San Francisco with its colorful Chinatown beckoning as a frequent setting, Loni has boned up on Chinese, learning to speak it phonetically.

She has always been a real professional in her choice of parts. When she was offered the role of Jennifer on WKRP in Cincinnati a few years ago, she agreed to take it only on the condition that she could play the part, "as a bright, sensitive, together woman who worked at the radio station and really knew her job and herself." The series was a hit for four years.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Loni and her sister, Andrea Sams, lived happy, almost idyllically normal lives. "My dad, Klaydon Anderson, was a chemist, an environmentalist, sort of ahead of his time, looking into noise, air and water pollution. I'd go with him when lie measured the water and even though I didn't understand what lie was doing, I remember thinking he was so smart."

Mom, Maxine Anderson, was almost the epitome of Harriet Nelson, but with a pitcher of martinis thrown in on those evenings when Klaydon came home from a particularly polluted day at work. "My mother was the super housewife of all time. My parents were very romantic, greeting each other at the door with a passionate kiss. They were very involved with each other. Sometimes we'd eat take-out food because Mom wasn't as interested in that side of domestic life. In her era, it was a sign that your husband was doing well to buy only canned and frozen food." Today the swing is back to all natural, but to Loni, naturalness is doing what works best for her.

Loni makes no secret of her naturally brunette hair, which did nothing for her budding acting career until she went to renowned hairdresser Jon Lawrence and changed it to blonde. Up until then, Loni was mostly receiving acting offers for parts as Indian maidens. About that time the Indian movement asked, "and rightfully;" avows Loni, "that their own people play Indian parts." So Loni jumped from Indian offers to dumb blonde parts, which were equally miscast. No small wonder that she stipulated that her WKRP role incorporate real human qualities, not those of a centerfold pin-up. He good sense had finally launched her career.

But there were years of indecision and trepidation leading up to her success. At the University of Minnesota, she majored in Art and Drama and earned a teaching certificate. "But," she remembers, "I had always secretly wanted to become an actress. I was working as a teaching assistant when I was offered my first professional acting role in Born Yesterday." She accepted and spent the next four years working in regional theatre musicals and comedies before she decided that Hollywood would provide a much better opportunity for putting her career together.

Even as a toddler she exhibited a knack for knowing how to put things together. "I had a puppet theatre and I was always building something for it. My dad used to tinker for hours to put some toy together, and even when I was three I'd walk up to him and say, `that piece goes there, and this piece goes here.' I'd be in my little sun suit, always extremely feminine, with a little flower in my hair, fixing the wagon or the toaster. I just had an ability to see arrangements with my hands."

And so, eager to get her hands on a career in Hollywood, Loni, by now a wife and young mother, headed for the coast with her husband, actor Ross Bickell, and their daughter, Deidre. Prior to this life-changing journey Loni says, "we didn't travel much as a family, but every summer we went on a car trip to the Black Hills in South Dakota or to Yellowstone Park." However this was a trip they hoped would be one-way, if they could just get that elusive Big Break.

They set up their home in a San Francisco Valley apartment and Loni learned how to stick to a budget while she and Ross made the rounds at audition. "I learned to cut corners by shopping at a little fruit and vegetable stand in Van Nuys, run by a darling Oriental couple in a former gas station. I went there everyday for fresh veggies and bought, -hat we could afford. I got very creative with artichokes. We had no money and we'd both do as much theatre as we could while trying to eke by at the same time with a baby."

Loni's salad days are not unlike those of her Partners in Crime character who also struggled while learning her profession. Both have also endured the trauma of divorce. In fact, Loni and Ross split up after seven years, but have remained friendly to this day. Deidre is a sophomore at UCLA now where her interests lie in political science, European travel and the non-dramatic world of academia. "Deidre's not all that interested in what I do," Loni says with pride, "expect she says she's proud of me and she thinks it's cute." However, if Deidre were to change her mind, she'd have little trouble following her mother's footsteps with her quick intelligence and honey-blonde good looks.

But putting her brunette hair and lapsed marriage behind her, Loni began to get better parts in such TV series as Barnaby Jones, M.A.S.H., Policewoman, The Bob Newhart Show, Three's Company, The Incredible Hulk, Love Boat and Phyllis.

And then when she gained steady work and almost instant recognition on WKRP, her horizons expanded to include Movies of the Week and TV specials such as The Magic of David Copperfield, The Guiness Book of World Records Christmas in Opryland Circus of the Stara, The Family Feud Special, Allan Funt's Candid Camera Special, Fabulous Funnies The Bob Hope Special and Jayne Mansfield. - A Symbol of the 50's.

Loni remembers portraying the late Jayne Mansfield: "It was the most grueling picture I've ever done because I was in every scene and it was only an 18-day shoot."

She told Zan Steward in The Movie Magazine. "We were working 12 hours a day on most days, with a forced call, which means you have to be back before your 12-hour turn around. I was glad Jayne looked really dissipated at the end of her life, because I felt that way at the end of the picture."

After a four year grind in weekly TV and the rigors of the Mansfield assignment, Loni was in no hurry to get back into a TV series. Her appetite for Broadway has been whetted ever since her dinner theatre day and she is quite candid about wanting to tackle the New York theatre sometime soon. But in the meantime she was quite content to spend some time in films, namely shooting Stroker Ace a year and a half ago in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina with Ned Beatty, Jim Nabors, director Hal Needham and, of course, Burt Reynolds.

The movie wasn't greeted very warmly but Loni was when she developed more than a professional interest in her leading man. Burt not only admired Loni as a person but her ability to play Ace's Pembrook Feeney, the world's oldest living virgin. "First of all;" Loni recalls, "it was a challenge because Pembrook is the sweetest person who ever lived. I had just finished playing a tough, knowing, worldly woman in Country Gold, a TV movie, and then I had to slip into this unknowing, sweet, unworldly person. But I really enjoyed her, her softness and her vulnerability. It's nice to think there's somebody like that around who's that sweet and untouched."

Since that time, Loni and Burt have been an off and on romantic item, currently very much on. Her publicist, Joe Sutton, described their relationship as, "together again, with a lot of respect and love:" And caring too, as Burt is quickly on the mend from a recent collapse in Florida.

Perhaps the only things Loni and Burt have going against them is time and distance. While he shuttles to locations between Los Angeles, Florida and points beyond, Loni has taken up residence for thirteen weeks in a leased condo in San Francisco where Partners is in production. And the work load of a weekly hour-long series isn't much easier than Loni's experience during the shooting of Mansfield, leaving her time for little else than a quick phoner to Deidre in Los Angeles and Burt, wherever he might be at the moment.

Yet Loni is relaxed in her new role and greatly enjoying the screen time and off time to get to know her co-star, Lynda Carter. And we might add that despite reports to the contrary, the two statuesque stars are fast becoming good friends.

They are both in great physical shape and Loni attributes her own measurements to her home exercise room and walking those steep San Francisco hills which serve as a perfect substitute for her daily away from home work-outs. Loni has even mastered the exercise of flipping a coin, just like George Raft did in the original gangster classic, Scarface.

It's too early to know the outcome of Partners in Crime's Nielsen coin flip, but Loni is well-grounded whichever way it falls. With art imitating life, and Loni's life specifically, there's a lot to be said for Loni's resourcefulness-the stuff' that helped a would-be teacher learn to solve one of life's greatest mysteries, the mystery of' success.

- ARLENE STARR

COVER STORY: WONDER WOMAN TACKLES A NEW STORY

You've heard the story before: Lanky adolescent blossoms, wins a big-time beauty contest, spends a year smiling at ribbon cutting ceremonies, marries, has children, and settles in suburbia.

For Lynda Carter, though, the story does not end so routinely. Her year as Miss World-USA was spent preparing for a career in show business, and led directly to her role as Wonder Woman. From there, cool determination; and fierce ambition brought her plan modeling jobs, her own production company and now, a second TV series, Partners In Crime. In it, she plays a classy, sophisticate who knows what she wants and is prepared to get it. Me call it typecasting.

In spite of having starred in a hit television series that was aimed at younger audiences, Lynda Carter's show business aspirations were actually sparked by an experience her older admirers can more easily accept. "When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about being a star," says TV's former Wonder Woman. "I remember, specifically, being about three years old and watching the Dinah Shore Show. She was throwing kisses and I said, "That's what I want to do.' I knew that's what I wanted. Right there."

Behind the stunning beauty who was, among other endless honors and awards, been named one of the Ten Most Admired Women in the World (according to a Gallup Poll), as well as being-made Beauty and Fashion Director for Maybelline, Lynda has always been a lady of rare determination. This trait, coupled with her unlimited willingness to work, not only provides a much-needed outlet for her energies, but has resulted in her starring in a second weekly series, Partners in Crime with WKRP's Loni Anderson, another TV beauty who is known for having the intelligence and drive to power her own career.

After being thrust into fame as the star of Wonder Woman for five years, Lynda has since established even more of a worldwide name for herself as a variety artist in television specials, as an international superstar with sold-out audiences, and as the star in several movies for television, produced by her own company. She is also a recording artist (very often performing songs she's written) and the leading spokesperson and model for one of the nation's leading cosmetics companies. And, as if these activities weren't enough to keep even a real Wonder Woman gasping with fatigue, Lynda is also a recent bride, having married Washington lawyer Robert Altman last January. She jokes that they're keeping their airlines rich with their constant L.A. to Washington commutes.

"I want everything," Lynda once half-jokingly confided in an inter view. "And I want it now:" Not that the raven-Haired actress is preoccupied with acquiring things; rather, she is straightforward about leer ambitions. When asked what her number one priority in life is, she usually responds, "My work."

"People referred to Ron (Samuels, her ex-husband and former manager) as my Svengali before;" says Carter, "and I tried not to let it bother me. Some people just lave to find a way to justify a woman's success. That's why they tend to say, 'The reason she's accomplished this is because she's being manipulated by someone else: That's easier for them than facing the realization that a woman can make it in this male-dominated business. The simplest thing for them to believe is that whatever she does is a direct cause of flee man in her life:'

Born in Phoenix. Arizona, Lynda's first performance was in a hometown talent show when she was four, approximately a year after being "inspired " by Dinah. Easily persuaded to perform whenever a group was willing to watch. Lynda blithely played for audiences throughout her neighborhood. "When I was small, people said I was pretty. Then I went through a stage in grade school that was terrible. I was tall, lanky, and wore size ten shoes. The other children called me Olive Oyl because I looked like Popeye's girlfriend."

As she entered high school, however, Lynda began to blossom with a vengeance that only other Olive Oyl-types can understand. "I never did date much in high school. I was a late bloomer. I had a crush on the high school football hero who didn't? -but he never asked me out. In fact, practically nobody did. The boys were my friends, but they didn't ask me for dates. I used to be the class clown and I used to make everyone feel at ease with my energy because I used to make them laugh." That same high energy found her becoming a member of a traveling music group when she was still in high school. However, the adventure soon made her realize that touring on the road wasn't the path she wanted.

"I think we were in Lima, Ohio, working our way east (with the group) when l just quit, I gave my notice arid said, `That's it. I want to go to Los Angeles and see if I can do some recording: But I went home first. It was really wild because I had worked steadily since I was 15. I was 20 then and had been on the road since I was 17, I was at home for about a week and a half and I was going crazy. So I went to my agent, she told me about the beauty contest (a local Miss Phoenix contest), and I told my family about it. I decided that it was an experience that I should have and I just thought, 'What the heck, I'll see what happens.' "

Lynda not only won the local contest but went on to win the state competition and, ultimately, the title of "Miss World-USA" in a dizzying span of 20 days. "Being Miss U.S.A. sort of took me from an everybody to a somebody in a particular area,' Lynda says today. "But it's a false celebrity. There's a new one every year. Yet it did give me the opportunity to go to California and study acting for over two years."

The move to California also enabled her to audition for a new show that was being cast. From over two thousand other applicants, Carter won the role Wonder Woman and has since found neither the time nor the inclination to slacken the pace.

"I'm doing what I love to do;" says Carter with a laugh whenever she's questioned about the pressures of being a multi-threat performer. " "I'm not happy when I'm not working. I'm an extremely motivated person and, when I have an hour or two, I'll write lyrics or I'll work on some music or read a script. I'll always try to do something constructive. Once in a while, I will play some backgammon but I really have to channel my energy and my time or, otherwise I would just be total bananas."

Whatever motivates Lynda obviously has its roots in her upbringing but it has been nurtured by other experiences as well. "My mother used to say things to me like, `I wish I had developed my voice: I never liked that-I just sort of said to myself that I would never say, '...I wish I could have."'

Lynda is the first to admit that she is competitive and that, for her, success is defined by "doing the things you like to do well. I'm very egotistical," she admitted, clarifying, "Not egomaniacal. Just really egotistical and excelling."

Aside from the determination which was instilled early on, Lynda also admits to more recent incidents which have given her further impetus in her striving for success. "A few years ago, I had everything I thought I wanted. But I wasn't at peace with myself. I was looking for something to bring me that peacefulness." After some forays into several self awareness movements as well as a brief flirtation with metaphysics ("I went to fortune tellers ..."), Lynda began talking at length with her older sister, Pam Cole, a born-again Christian. "My sister and 1 are very close," Lynda smiles, "and I would talk with her every chance I could get, even though she lives in Arizona.

"She was always there for me and the Lord talked to me through her: Finding the Lord has totally changed my life, and totally for the good. He has given me consistency, which is most important because I am somewhat unpredictable.

"When I am asked whom I admire most, I'd have to answer that it's Pam. Her spirit is so pure. She's so generous with her tine. She's been through a lot and her empathy toward mankind is great. She'd do anything for anybody. Plus, she's funny and warm. I admire most the people who are achievers, people who have self-respect and dignity. They aren't out after someone else's husband or wife; they're not out to cheat someone in business; they're not ready to skim five dollars off a bill when they go to a restaurant. I simply can't stand those petty things"

Considering the distance she's covered from her "lanky, Olive Oyl" days, most people would think Linda would jump at the chance to rest-at least momentarily-on her already somewhat impressive accomplishments. "No, not really;" she smiles "I am very grateful, and very thankful for everything I have experienced because I think the success of any individual is not solely because of the individual.

"I think the individual must have something special, something that everyone talks about, but no one knows what it is-until they see it. And when they do see it, they know and, if they're able to, they do something to help. There are a lot of people around me who have helped, who have been good to me, and I so appreciate them. In my career, I've been pleased and been very fortunate.

Having just begun her new series, it's clear to her many admirers that Lynda will be the first to admit that she had, indeed, had many "partners" in her career. "I was asked once not too long ago if this was the life I had envisioned," Carter says. "I think it's better than anything I could have ever envisioned. I was raised with very definite ideas about things, in terms of values and judgments about yourself, how you felt about yourself, and maintaining your own dignity and seeking what you want for yourself. My parents taught us to believe in-and to feel good about-ourselves, and to follow through. Because you can talk and talk, but it's the follow-through that means something the execution of your dreams. How does that go? Oh, yes . . . "to dream the dream where no one listens, and thoughts are thought without omission."'

"Sometimes, it's so tough. I wouldn't encourage anyone to go into this business-but, then, people said the same thing to me and;" she adds, smiling, "I didn't listen to them."

-AGGIE ANUNIACION

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