The Central New Jersey Home News from New Brunswick, New Jersey • 41

LIFE STYLE ENTERTAINMENT BOOKS ARTS A HOBBIES WEDDINGS ENGAGEMENTS Computer artist Lillian Schwartz operates video cassette deck projecting computer film In her home studio In Watchung. The Innova- tlve artist and filmmaker says she finds her Inspiration In "the technology around me." Story on page C12 SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 1977 CI IV; pfcpyfe I 4 4 4 4 4 4 EDISON'S OWN SUSAN SARANDON 4 4 4 hoi The folks at home are watching The Other Side of Midnight' with a touch of special pride PROUD FAMILY Beneath a portrait of actress Susan Sarandon, her mother, Mrs. Philip Leslie Tomalin, and brothers O'Brian and Terrence look over one of several scrapbooks containing clippings about the actress. Terrence's T-shirt reads "Lipstick," the title of the film that starred actor Chris Sarandon, husband of the actress. Miss Sarandon grew up in Edison and attended township schools.

"Lots of young actresses just can't talk. But Susan can. She has many interests parapsychology, ecology, different philosophies. She's a deep gal." One of Miss Sarandon's younger sisters, Amanda, is the actress' chronicler, cutting clippings and keeping up the scrapbooks. Amanda, as well as sisters Melissa and Meredith, and brothers Terrence and O'Brian, are still living at home.

Another sister, Mrs. Bonnie Lyons, is a Franklin resident. Brothers Tim and Philip live in Plainfield and Virginia, respectively. Before becoming an actress. Miss Sarandon had a brief modeling career, and she'll appear on a forthcoming "Playboy" magazine cover.

But her mother says: "She'll be clothed. And there will be no centerfold. "She's always made it clear that she will not appear nude as Susan Saran- Miss Sarandon made her debut as a teenager in "Joe." Her other feature film credits include "The Great Waldo Pepper" she played the girl who fell to her death from the wing of a plane "Lovin' Molly," "The Front Page" and "The Rocky Horror Show." The latter film has turned into the underground pop-cult hit of the season. It's playing Saturday nights at New Brunswick's Art Cinema in a late showing, and Miss Sarandon is seen as Janet. She also makes frequent talk show appearances, including several with Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson.

Although these shows are watched eagerly by the Tomalins, Susan's mother confesses: "Sometimes I'm inclined to plug my ears because I don't know what she's going to say next! But seriously, she handles herself beautifully. This is why they ask her back so often. don, though she will do a tasteful nude scene as a character." In her film debut, "Joe," she did such a scene. Mrs. Tomalin says: "It took me a long time to go see that movie.

But what ended up troubling me more than the nude scene was the context of the film. She played a young girl who gets caught up in the drug scene, and the young girl was the daughter of an ad man." (Miss Sarandon's father is vice president of Ogilvy Mather, a New York advertising agency. The actress' next film, "Pretty Baby" has been completed after being shot in New Orleans. In it, she plays the young prostitute mother of a child prostitute. Right now, she says, she's "taking the summer off just resting at this point." After "The Other Side of Midnight," she deserves time to recuperate.

She underwent perils that would have been the envy of Pauline, heroine of those early cliff-hangers. As Cathy, she gets abandoned in a cave by her screen husband, attacked by a swarm of bats, escapes into a storm into a boat that capsizes into a raging sea and she is presumed drowned. She doesn't have fond memories of the cavern scene, shot in the Luray Caverns in Virginia. She was required to look terrified and emit a bone-chilling scream. Both came easy.

"I'm absolutely terrified of bats," she He adds: "She was into acting from the time she was a child." At Edison High School, Miss Sarandon excelled at modern dance and was active in cheerleading. She also appeared in two school plays, "Lady Precious Dream" and "My Sister Eileen," in which she played the title-role. It was through a former teacher there, Carolyn Dolinich. that Miss Sarandon chose Catholic University. The teacher left Edison to take graduate courses at the university.

"With her help," says Miss Sarandon, "I learned more about the school and decided to go there." There she met her future husband, who was taking a master's degree in drama. She then took up acting so that the two could have dual careers. Today, both have emerged as two of the most interesting young screen talents on the scene. Both project an extra dimension not often seen in young stars, and both are dedicated, excellent craftsmen. Says Miss Sarandon's father: "Susan is not into the movie star aspect of the profession.

She's more interested in good roles. She's very down to earth." Her mother describes her as "a worker. She always was. She was and is a strong-willed girl and when she's interested in something; it gets done." The Tomalins have three scrapbooks full of magazine and newspaper articles about Miss Sarandon and her husband. And there are plenty of such articles, since both are making impressive careers.

She has much nicer recollections of last year's Bicentennial Firemen's Parade in Edison, where she graced an old-time open car as parade queen. She also returned home to watch brother Terrence compete at Rutgers University in the 1975 Raritan Valley Swimming Conference Championships. "Whenever I'm not working I like to get home for a visit." she says. "Because I truthfully never know what my working schedule will be. For instance, I made three movies literally back to back, then I did another film.

So I try to touch home base whenever it's possible." Of her profession, she says candidly: "Actors are like children: creative, imaginative, vulnerable. Acting is playing, and the best actors have this incredible sense of play. But acting becomes truly a craft when choice and self-discipline are there." When acting stops being fun, she says, "then I'll go on to something else, like writing or directing." Miss Sarandon has an apartment in Los Angeles, but home base remains the farm in New York's Westchester County that she shared with her husband. Technically, the couple is separated, but they still remain warm, close friends, and whatever the temporary marital arrangement, it hasn't cost Sarandon any fans in the Tomalin household. All the youngsters sport T-shirts bearing the titles of his films, as well as those of their sister.

"Susan will not give up that farm. 'She was always writing plays, staging them, starring everyone in backyard By ANN LEDESMA Home News staff writer EDISON "The Other Side of Midnight" is making a hit with movie audiences everywhere, but it's of special interest to township residents. That's because the role of Cathy is being played by actress Susan Sarandon, who grew up in Edison the oldest of nine children of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Leslie Tomalin of Dorset Way.

The actress acquired her professional name when she married actor Chris Sarandon "The "Dog Day whom she met when both were students at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. But her elementary and secondary education was obtained at St. Francis Grammar School and Edison High School. And some of the background training for the expert swimming she has to do in the film may have been acquired at the Woodside Pool, where, Susan's father recalls: "She was one of the best swimmers around." In a telephone interview with The Home News, Miss Sarandon recalled: "I was born in New York and we moved to Edison when I was 4. My father loved the outdoors and the idea of space.

Our parents didn't like the thought of raising kids in a city apartment." Miss Sarandon says she never thought of a performing career until she entered Catholic University, but her parents remember things differently. Her mother, Lee, says: "She was always writing plays, staging them, starring everyone in backyard productions." And her father will never forget one incident that occurred when his daughter was 4 years old and he was a producer at WOR-TV in New York. "I always tended to keep her away from the studio because frankly, I hated kid actors," he says. "But one day I did take her to the studio. I got busy and she wandered off, and right on to the set of the old Bruce and Dan television show, that was on the air right at that moment.

"Bruce and Dan got a kick out of having the producer's kid there, so they started talking to her. Dan was older and balding. Bruce was young and handsome, and Dan asked Susan who she thought was the handsomer of the two. She said Dan was, and everyone got a lot of fun out of that. "Later I asked her who she really thought was handsomer.

She told me she thought Bruce was. So I asked her why she'd named Dan. And she said: 'I thought that would et a bigger From that time on I never took her to the studio again." and she will not give up the marriage," says Mrs. Tomalin. The actress told one news columnist that it was not career conflict that caused the separation, but the faft that both she and her husband are "still growing, in many ways." The columns, the movies, the articles, the talk shows, have made the local community very proud of Miss Sarandon.

Mrs. Tomalin says: "Often when people are close to a situation they tend to nit-pick. But not one per- son said they didn't like Susan's last film. They're all so proud of her. espe- cially here in the neighborhood where she grew up." i Theater managers feel the same way.

When "Joe" played at the Plainfield-Edison Drive-In, the marquee pro-, claimed that "Edison's own Susan Sar- andon" would be seen in the show. At the Iselin Theater when "Waldo Pepper" was on, an announcement before the show informed patrons of the same fact. And young O'Brian Tomalin, who was in the audience, stood up and applauded and shouted: "That's my sister!" jii SALVATION After a turbulent marriage and narrow escape from death, Cathy (Miss Sarandon) finds peace as a nun in "The Other Side of Midnight." UNHAPPY WIFE -Miss Sarandon is seen as Cathy In "The Other Side of Midnight," here attempting to ease her loneliness with alcohol..