Fun Finds: Photo Screen Magazine, October 1978

Why, yes, I did just recently present a Fun Find that was an issue of Photo Screen Magazine, but that one was from 1973. This one was purchased the same day, so it's been in a holding pattern until I did a couple of other posts so that we could avoid being too, too repetitious in The Underworld. The cover of this one screams out about the "marriage" between John Travolta and Connie Stevens (!) and couldn't be any more far-fetched if it were on the cover of Starlog or Fangoria magazines instead! Less lunatic headlines refer to the real marital troubles of Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors as well as the honeymoon of Donny Osmond and his wife. You may need to open a new tab or window in order to read the text of these scans.

The "TV and Movie Scoops" section has an eye-catching photo of Cher and her baby boy (by temporary husband Greg Allman) Elijah Blue. Blurbs include one about the supposed stability of Cheryl Tiegs' marriage to ad-exec Stan Dragoti. They divorced the very next year after about a decade of marriage! Tiegs was married and divorced three more times after this. There's also info on Lee and Farrah spending time together, Scott Baio admitting to a temper, Ricardo Montalban enjoying his TV success, Dean Martin guest-starring on Charlie's Angels and Henry "The Fonz" Winkler returning from his honeymoon. (I'm happy to report that they are still together after thirty-seven years!) A final item notes how Joyce DeWitt is unused to signing autographs (which is something she has since become quite familiar with at nostalgia conventions!) DeWitt, who has never married, lived with Ray Buktenica (misspelled in the column) for seven years.

The next page features the wedding of Michelle Phillips to a TV executive. They would remain wed until 1982. In 2000, Phillips wed for a fourth time in 2000 to a man she's still with today. There's a blurb about Shaun Cassidy having to cancel a concert due to poor advance sales, one about Natalie Wood quitting smoking by an unusual method, former child actor Shelley Fabares remarking on playing a mother now (in a TV-movie that also starred Mickey Rooney) and Janet Louise Johnson on portraying Nancy Drew after Pamela Sue Martin vacated the role. Johnson acted until the mid-1990s, but eventually married, had three kids and now works as a child care instructor. Other bits include Angie Dickinson's relief that the grind of Police Woman is over, Greg Mullavey and then-wife Meredith MacRae eating at McDonald's (their union ended in 1987), the burgeoning career of Andrew Stevens and Robert Urich wanting to adopt a baby with his wife Heather Menzies. They wound up adopting three and were happy together until his untimely death in 2002. Photos include one of Telly Savalas with his son and a fun shot of Vic Tayback and Polly Holliday of Alice.

I had to include this little sliver of a remainder of the Hollywood Scoop section because it includes a photo of the delicious Dack Rambo. Kevin Brophy did indeed propose to and marry Amy Prettyman. What's more interesting is that Brophy later costarred with Peter Barton in 1981's Hell Night and, in 2013, a man neither actor had ever met left the two favorite stars over $1 million to split! Meanwhile, the man had been living in squalor with no plumbing. There's also a blurb about Kiss rocker Gene Simmons surprising then-girlfriend Cher with a party. The other photo is of Happy Days' Tom Bosley and refers to him as "happily married" though his wife actually died in April of 1978, months before this issue was written! In 1980, he remarried and was wed for thirty years to that wife until his death in 2010.

Next up is the lavish wedding of Princess Caroline of Monaco to Parisian banker Philippe Junot. A photo shows Cary Grant, Caroline's mother's friend and movie costar when she was known as Grace Kelly and not Princess Grace. Grace, by the way, seems to have worn the equivalent of a floral Mohawk to one of the events, judging by the photo!

Bursting onto the pages of the magazine at apparently the eleventh hour is an announcement about the killing of Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane. He died in mid-July of 1978, so that's about when this "October" issue was being prepared. One can see the sketchiness of the details of the crime in this early account and, in fact, the case was cold for a dozen years until it was reopened in 1990, followed by a 1994 trial involving one of Crane's disgruntled friends. The man was found not guilty amid inconclusive evidence and reasonable doubt.

This next article focuses on Elliott Gould, who, after having divorced second wife - and mother of two of his children - Jenny Bogart in 1975, remarried her in 1978! They divorced a second time in 1979 (and Gould, who had previously been wed to Barbra Streisand from 1963 to 1971, has not remarried anyone since.)

This next page reflects upon behind-the-scenes squabbles during Heaven Can Wait (1978), in particular between Warren Beatty and his female costars Dyan Cannon and Julie Christie. Beatty's exasperating attention to detail and obsessiveness are also mentioned with regard to the film's editing and poster art. On the same page, the move to shake some of the 1950s aura off of Grease (1978) and imbue it with some modern touches are discussed.

Here we come to the Fawcett-Majors marital problems, though this is prior to the big one which resulted in a splashy divorce in 1982. Here, the other man she's supposedly fallen for is her Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978) costar Jeff Bridges! Bridges was a newlywed at the time to a wife he remains with to this day (and who was with him on location.) The baby referred to was nothing more than a future baby (which never came) that Majors wanted to be raised by a mom and not nannies and so forth.

The movie Somebody Killed Her Husband (which some critics re-dubbed "Somebody Killed her Career!") was Fawcett's first movie after breaking her Charlie's Angels contract after one season, but it was not the movie she'd had in mind when she did that. She was initially to star in Foul Play (1978) opposite Chevy Chase, but when legal entanglements over Angels prohibited her from doing that one, Goldie Hawn was cast. Chase later costarred with Fawcett in the middling comedy Man of the House (1995), playing a potential stepfather to her son Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

The cover story is so preposterous as to make one's eyes bug out. John Travolta and Connie Stevens happened to be standing near one another (perhaps!) at a party and somehow a huge fabrication was created out of that. The article goes on and on about Travolta's mature girlfriend Diana Hyland, who died of cancer in his arms, and about his slate of films before suggesting, out of the blue, that Connie Stevens (sixteen years his senior) would make the perfect match for him!

She is even quoted in the article as saying that she's in a relationship with someone who's name she won't divulge and the author of the article acts like it's Travolta, though there is nothing to suggest that except his or her own fertile imagination. The baby allegedly arriving in the magazine's headline is nothing but Stevens' (already a mother of two) desire to have one more (though she was forty at this time) as well as Travolta's wish to have a few kids.  The whole story is poppycock and certainly not the advertised "Scoop of the Year!"

This next two-page spread offers up quotes from the stars along with photos of the person being quoted. John Wayne, whose life would be taken by stomach cancer within a year, expresses his "greed" at wanting more time while Cheryl Tiegs announces how nice she is. (We might ask one of those four ex-husbands what they think! Ha!)

The following page weighs in with Michael Landon on crying (he cried in very many episodes of Little House on the Prairie), virginal Debby Boone (she married the son of Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney the year after this and they remain wed today), enthusiastic Mick Jagger and starstruck Cheryl Ladd.

Another splashy, incorrect article shines the spotlight on newlywed Donny Osmond and his bride Debbie, suggesting that they separated during their honeymoon. Osmond had pulled a fast one by announcing their engagement only one week after ever having revealed her to the public! But they'd been dating on the down low for a couple of years to avoid publicity (of this very sort!)

The article also suggests that Donny dragged his siblings Jimmy and Marie on the honeymoon, when, in fact, this photo was from filming during the movie "Aloha, Donny & Marie" (released in 1978 as Goin' Coconuts), at which Debbie was a visitor. There is also a lengthy segment about how Jake LaMotta's daughter had come forward to say that she was jilted by Osmond after his promising to marry her because she was not a Mormon like him. He claimed he'd never even heard of her before! In any case, Osmond was and is devoutly Morman and he and his wife are still married with five children and an assortment of grandchildren.

Things switch to daytime TV in this next section. It's chiefly an Emmy recap with Ryan's Hope winning for best Writing and Days of Our Lives as Best Series. Laurie Heineman, Outstanding Actress winner had left the show to focus on prime-time acting, but was mostly limited to TV-movie and series guest roles. Mary Fickett (pictured) of All My Children was the first daytime actress to receive an Emmy, which, oddly enough, she won in prime-time before the separate daytime awards were instituted the following year!

The Outstanding Actor winner, James Pritchett of The Doctors, has for years been nothing to me but a man in black and white photos, but thanks to recent re-airings of The Doctors on RetroTV (beginning with late-1967 ones and currently up to early-1969), I have become familiar with his engagingly-curmudgeonly persona. It's so sad that I have somehow become hooked on a long-defunct soap opera from when I was but an infant! Another departing daytimer was Michael Nouri, who did go on to a measure of success including Flashdance (1983.) There's a fun photo of daytime fixture Ruth Warrick visiting Rosemary Prinz (of As the World Turns) and Colby Hicks (who would later fins success as Catherine Hicks.)

This next page is kind of fun because it centers on stars from the past more than the flavors of the moment. We hear about Ann Blyth's daughter, Burt Ward's love life, the romances of Ruth Buzzi and Anne Baxter and the by-mail marriage proposals that Rita Hayworth was still getting at this late stage. Also there are bits about acting gigs for Katharine Hepburn, June Lockhart, Joan Blondell, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Sylvia Sidney. Performing on stage at the time were Leonard Nimoy, Myrna Loy, Joanne Woodward & Shirley Knight, Patrick MacNee, Red Skelton and Fred Gwynne. Then there are promotional bits regarding Paul Newman, Arlene Dahl, Charles Farrell and Doris Day along with the photo of Janet Gaynor.

This article features that famous night at the 50th Annual Oscar ceremony in which Barbara Stanwyck was taken by surprise when William Holden discarded his scripted presenter babble in favor of a tribute to his long-ago costar from Golden Boy (1939.) He was so green he was in danger of being fired, but she stepped in and demanded that he be given a chance, working with him until his performance had improved substantially. A touching postscript to this came in 1982 when Stanwyck was bestowed with an Honorary Oscar and dedicated it to her "golden boy" Holden, who had died a few months prior.

This next section has a fun title, "TattleTales." First is a blurb about Dustin Hoffman experiencing marital problems and possibly doing a movie with Kate Jackson, who he'd recently met. Hoffman and Anne did divorce in 1980 (he remarried that same year, days later, to his present wife.) The movie project was Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), which Jackson had to give up due to Charlie's Angels, paving the way for Meryl Streep to win an Oscar! Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach did stay married, but only until 1981. Nick Nolte's marriage to Sharon only lasted til 1983. The movie they mention was never made, though he did later costar with Susan Sarandon in Lorenzo's Oil (1992.) Other bits discuss Rock Hudson, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and the ever-present Farrah Fawcett. There's a photo of Barbara Bain and Martin Landau, rather rare, too, since this was a career dry spell for them. To the surprise of many, they divorced in 1993 after 36 years of marriage. Another couple is shown whose split caused a shock. Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker divorced in 1982 after two decades of wedded bliss.

There's a mention of Return Engagement, a 1978 TV-movie that Elizabeth Taylor did with Joseph Bottoms when she was close to her heaviest. The marriage mentioned for Jennifer O'Neill didn't even last a year and was only one of NINE marriages the actress has undergone! Other bits touch on Richard Dreyfus, Maureen Stapleton, Sally Struthers, Esther Rolle, Valerie Perrine and a TV series based on Saturday Night Fever (1977) which never materialized.We also find photos of Diana Canova with her mother Judy, an impossibly young and thin James Woods and new heartthrob Andrew Stevens on the town with Kim Darby.

In yet another, ignorant and baiting sort of article, Suzanne Somers is depicted with her husband Alan Hamel while also shown in an embrace with John Ritter as the headline screams about her married lover. Then the sub-heading describes their "open marriage."

As the article proceeds, its just a piece about her (secure) marriage and how they deal with the outside pressures of stardom, including the demands on her time and attention. The "married lover" referred to in the headline is her HUSBAND! The article even goes on to state that.  Dumb... Somers and Hamel were in a relationship close to ten years before they tied the knot and they are still together today, offering up yet one more example of a Tinseltown marriage that works, whatever it takes.

Here we have one of those old-fashioned type of publicity opportunities in which the magazine visits the star at home and sees him going about various activities. In this case it's then-hot Erik Estrada of CHiPs.

The photo-essay has him fixing food, exercising, enjoying a visit from his mother and sister and basically playing out a series of staged scenarios for the camera. My favorite caption is this one: "When his sister's around, Erik challenges her to a game of backgammon while they listen to disco records."

Talk about a sensational headline... INCEST!  LOL  This article talks about Bruce Boxleitner marrying his own sister. In fact, Kathryn Holcomb, Boxleitner's new wife, played his sister on their TV series How the West Was Won. Their union produced two children and lasted until 1987. She is actually the one who introduced Boxleitner to Melissa Gilbert who, after two false starts, became his second wife in 1995, though they divorced in 2012.

Our final section is called "Manhattan Party Line" with a look at New York City celebrity news. Liza Minnelli's Tony win and excerpt performance from The Act at the ceremony is discussed. There is also a tidbit on James Brolin and the career restrictions that Marcus Welby, M.D. put on him for several years. He also remarks upon his marriage, which lasted until 1986. After another decade married to Jan Smithers, he startled the world by marrying Barbra Streisand in 1998 and they're together still. A story and photo depict Princess Caroline with her pal model-turned-singer Madleen Kane, who was a disco recording artist for several years.

An interesting blurb about Ryan O'Neal recounts the way onlookers were making it tough to film Oliver's Story (1978) downtown, but more intriguingly how he wound up not doing The Champ (1979) because he'd intended to use his son Griffin O'Neal in the role that later shot Ricky Schroeder to fame. There's also mention of Claudette Colbert returning to Broadway after a fifteen year absence. The Kingfisher, opposite Rex Harrison, ran for about six months. Surprisingly, the only award recognition went to the sole remaining player, George Rose, who won a Drama Desk Award! Photos include David Frost, Scott Baio & Erin Moran (in almost matching get-ups) and Kate Jackson.

The last page focuses on Jack Lemmon's stage hit Tribute, Jill St. John's preferences when it comes to men and Jon Voight discussing his parental practices (one of the kids being two year-old Angelina Jolie!) He has plenty to say on the matter, though the two have gone through plenty of rough patches during her adult life. Photos feature Kristy McNichol behind the wheel of a car, Elliott Gould with his new/old wife and kids and June Allyson with her third husband (she had also married her second husband and divorced him twice!) Allyson's third and last hubby was a retired dentist who eventually turned to acting himself and toured in plays with Allyson along with a few TV gigs. They remained together for three decades until her death in 2006.

We hope you had fun thumbing through the pages of this celeb rag and we'll be back again soon with more fun.