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When stars are managed by their husbands, their careers may soar-or plummet.

Last fall, when Jayne Kennedy was simultaneously taping Speak Up America, preparing for a movie and testing for another N show, her husband, Leon Isaac Kennedy, came up with the idea for her to do color commentary of championship boxing matches for cable television. "I told him I definitely didn't want to do it," recalls Jayne. "I was really tired-I'd been working for two years straight. I knew I wouldn't have the time to get ready for it, and I didn't want to go into anything unprepared."

So Leon said: "Boxing's interesting." But Jane said: "I don't want to cover boxing. I just want to cover football." And Leon said: "Well, you've got to do it, because the deal's already made." And three weeks later Jayne was ringside. a certified lady fight commentator. Because Leon Kennedy calls a lot of the shots in his wife's career, people in Hollywood have compared him to that absorbing-and subversive-character of 19th-century literature, Svengali. As English writer George du Maurier conjured him up, Svengali, a musician, put a young model, Trilby, under his hypnotic spell and turned her into a great singer. During the "heyday" of Hollywood, studio moguls like Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn were considered the real Svengalis. personally prodding their stars' careers along, and usually having a big say in their personal lives as well. If someone such as a husband got in the way, the studio chiefs would just tell him to "get the hell out." But as television grew and movie studios lost some clout, the age of the independent star-maker arose. Agents, managers and lawyers took over performers' careers, and on occasion a performer would agree to give hubby that job and keep it all in the family.

Surely everyone is familiar with John and Bo Derek. They apparently grew so accustomed to hearing the word Svengali applied to their relationship that they named their joint film company Svengali, Inc. Similarly, some of the biggest stars in television-including Lynda Carter, Suzanne Somers and Deborah Raffinare married to men who have been accused of "pulling the strings," "running the show" and making every decision for the wife up to and including what color eye shadow she'll wear on her next TV special.

Jeff Wald, a manager and agent by training, successfully managed singer Helen Reddy's career throughout the 14 years of their marriage-and still manages it despite their recent separation, which was brought on not by professional tensions but, in large part, by his publicly announced cocaine habit. According to Wald. the only way such a husband-and wife working arrangement can flourish is if the man has a complete knowledge of the business and "an identity of his own." Successful relationships of this type, says Wald, have included those of Mike Todd and Elizabeth Taylor, Joe Hamilton and Carol Burnett, and, before their separation, Grant Tinker and Mary Tyler Moore.

A newer husband-wife partnership that, in Wald's estimation, has not worked, is that of Three's Company's Suzanne Somers and her husband Alan Hamel. Hamel had been a talk-show host and spokesman for the Alpha Beta grocery chain in Canada, but had had no prior management experience. Yet, seven months ago, Somers and Hamel fired her longtime personal manager Jay Bernstein, and Hamel took over. Hamel then demanded that Three's Company raise his wife's weekly salary from $30,000 to $150,000 and give her 10 per cent of the show's profits. Both demands were denied.

"Alan Hamel has experience selling Alpha Beta grapefruits," says Wald. "I think he made a terrible error in judgment. There isn't $150,000 to give a person on a 30-minute show."

Another industry source agrees: "It was a big disaster. Publicly threatening to pull her off the show unless they drastically increased her salary, then allowing her to return to the show without the raise showed eroded positioning. A manager always wants to protect the apparent clout of his clients. But all Hamel proved is that Three's Company holds the cards." Indeed, it does. At season's end, ABC announced Somers' contract had been terminated. The series will resume next fall without her.

More successful, so far, has been the partnership of Ron Samuels and Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter. When their romance began, he was already doing well as a personal manager whose clients included Lindsay Wagner and Jaclyn Smith. Soon he and Carter made a pact: they would marry, but their careers wouldn't. "We wanted to maintain a clean relationship," says Carter. "We were so much in love, we didn't want business to become more important."

That pact lasted two weeks. Recalls Carter: "Ron saw people putting me on Hollywood Squares and wanting me to run around in my Wonder Woman costume, and he couldn't stand it. He fired my agent." Says Samuels : "I unloaded everybody. I cleaned house." And became his wife's manager.

"You have no idea how much pressure it takes off me to totally trust my manager," says Carter. "I feel that I definitely have an edge because Ron has no ulterior motives. He is so much more sensitive to my needs and to my frailties than someone whom you're just paying a certain percentage of your salary. A lot of times I think Ron has more confidence in me than I have in myself."

Ron moved swiftly. The first thing he did was rescue Wonder Woman, then floundering on an irregular basis at ABC, and persuade CBS to turn it into a one hour prime-time series. But Samuels also saw Carter's potential beyond the voluptuous comic-strip character-as a TV variety performer, recording artist and Las Vegas headliner. "The proof is in the pudding," says Carter, referring to her two highly rated TV musical specials last year and one TV-movie (on all of which he served as executive producer), plus her recording contracts, her engagements at Caesars Palace and, most recently, her appearance at London's Palladium. "That is why I defer to his judgment about what I'm going to be doing," she says. Conversely, he consults her on investment matters, at which she is a whiz.

"I think our interdependence has been a strengthening fact," says Carter. "Sometimes we get in a trap, but it's the same as in any marriage-it takes a lot of effort." Actress Deborah Raffin also finds that the pluses of working with her husband Michael Viner counteract the occasional pressures such an alliance can create. "It's very difficult to keep a level head in this business," she says. "Most people think actresses only want to hear adulation, and they baby and pamper you. That is not what I wanted. If Michael goes to the dailies, he gives me an honest critique. You don't get that from a stranger."

When he became her manager, Viner set out first to help Raffin escape becoming "just another pretty face," an attribute she had amply displayed in movies like "Forty Carats," "The Dove" and "Once is Not Enough." "What I ideally wanted," says Raffin, "was respect from my peers and to stretch as an actress." So Viner advised her to pull out of films for a while and to polish her skills in regional theater, followed by a stint at the National Theatre in London. It worked. Raffin returned to Hollywood a better actress and conquered meaty roles in "Willa" and "Haywire." And despite the "in hiatus" status of Foul Play, her first crack at comedy, Raffin cites it as another example of her new ability to "stretch."

One of the great advantages of being married to your manager, observes Warren Cowan. president of Rogers and Cowan Public Relations, is that "more times than not, the woman has somebody thinking about 'her' all day long."

Yet there can be career disadvantages for both partners. Many times producers, agents and studio executives wonder why the man has "latched on" to his wife's career, and they complain that "you can't argue with pillow talk." For the woman, there's always the danger of putting blind trust in a person with the power to make or break you. When Doris Day's husband and manager Martin Melcher died, not only did she learn that he had signed her to a weekly TV series, The Doris Day Show, that she wanted no part of, but he left her $450.000 in debt.

It's also clear that areas of tension can arise during prolonged periods of separation when the woman is on the road (Samuels always makes a point of traveling with Carter) or when husband and wife are together constantly, and breakfast, lunch and dinner conversation revolves around one subject: work.

Of all the couples, the Kennedys seem to point up the ambivalence of this sort of relationship. "If I really had it to do over again," says Leon, "I don't know how I would do it. I like what I've done for Jayne's career, but I also miss the human side (of the marriage) for myself. Just speaking as a man, since we've been married I'm lonelier than I've ever been. I often end up eating alone. But we both made an agreement to accept those sacrifices for now and build the career."

"if it weren't for Leon," says Jane, "I might not be in this business. I was enrolled in college, majoring in political science, and Leon just got hold of me and told me I could make it. One of the things I respect about him the most is: he is a hustler. He doesn't let anything get in his way."

It is also Leon who takes full responsibility for the current state-some say predicament -of Jayne's career. She is without The NFL Today show that propelled her into national prominence. Leon was the one who decided she should take a crack at Speak Up America last summer on NBC, even though it meant losing her contract for NFL on CBS. "On NFL she was talking not even five minutes on a half-hour show," maintains Leon. "I thought even if Speak Up America lasted 10 shows, it would give people in the industry a chance to see Jayne really shine." Speak Up America, of course, didn't even last 10 shows. but Jayne. evidently dismayed at losing her sports showcase, insists she hasn't been left high and dry. She has been working on two movies for the Kennedys' Jaleon Star Productions, on a five-minute syndicated program called Jayne Kennedy's NFL Report, on the fight coverage for cable TV and on a pilot for a half-hour syndicated sports talk show.

"I've learned to trust Leon and go along with his decisions," says Jayne. "because 99 per cent of the time, he's right."

But is he her Svengali, too? Like Ron Samuels and Jeff Wald. Leon Kennedy laughs off that description. Wald sums up their collective attitude best: "Calling me a Svengali is implying Helen's an idiot. I didn't write 'I Am Woman,' she did I'm not the one being witty on Johnny Carson, she is. We're not Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy-we're more like Ariel and Will Durant."