St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 37

ST. LOUIS HOST-DESPATCH WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 1 991 3E Role-Reversals For Gopher, Cooter VIETS r-r? 1 i zr zzr it Quackers Ducknapping By Jill Lawrence Of the Associated Press WASHINGTON SO YOU WANNA be a political star? Listen up: Get a silly part on an PCfnnicf TV corioc ctirir with it tnr years, then run for Congress. Hey, it worked for Gopher and Cooter. The bumbling purser on "The Love Boat" and the hayseed garage mechanic on "The Dukes of Hazzard," respectively, are living proof that clownish sitcom roles can disguise serious politicians. The featherweight prime-time images projected by Reps.

Fred Grandy (Gopher) and Ben Jones (Cooter) have dissolved to reveal two blunt and thoughtful lawmakers. They aren't afraid to defy conventional wisdom, their parties or their constituents on occasion. And they don't shy away from sensitive issues such as banning flag-burning or censoring arts grants; they've been outspoken opponents of both. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the two were on TV shows that were light fare, to say the most. "I did a lot of acting with chimps and animals," says Grandy, an Iowa Republican.

He has no illusions about finnhen "He was the amiable. wisecracking, cute, oafish second officer who usually acted as a foil for the captain. He usually didn't get the Jones, a folksv Georgia Democrat, has gentler memories. He compares his character to Little John or Huckleberry Finn. "Cooter was the quintessential good ol' boy, Jones drawls.

"He'd give you the shirt off his back. He was hard-working, unpretentious and fun-loving." Well, maybe. But the bottom line is Cooter fixed cars and Gopher, as he says now, mainly stood by the cruise "shin door and said "Welcome bi3ky AP to in "The Dukes of Hazzard" Georgia Democrat. Fred Grandy, Republican of Iowa, went from "The Love Boat" to the ship of state. years later, the show still going strong, Grandy went home to Sioux City to run for Congress "dragging the dead weight of Gopher," as one writer put it.

Jones lived in Atlanta and commuted to Los Angeles during his seven years as Cooter. His sitcom image, while no more profound than Grandy's, was less wimpish. But Jones carried other baggage: an alcoholic past during which he went through wives at a brisk clip and was thrown in jail "a dozen times at least" on charges such to a shower, and I told everyone I lost my other white glove." Barbara admits her behavior at the shower was peculiar. You'd act the same way, if someone kidnapped your duck. "I came in waving this white glove and said, 'Hi everyone.

See this. So you all I couldn't tell if anyone there was in cahoots with the kidnapper." After working hand in glove with the ducknappers, she waited for her duck to return. Nothing happened. Her front porch stayed as cold, gray and naked as her lost duck. Two weeks later, she got another note on orchid paper.

This time, the message was more ominous. It said: "Did you miss me? You shouldn't have taken that glove off to eat that finger sandwich." Did you take the glove off? "Sure," she said. The note had another demand. "Now you'll carry a brown paper bag under your arm all day Saturday, Feb. 23.

This is not a joke." That was the pits. But Barbara carried the paper bag. "Well, I had it my pocket. That way, if the doorbell rang, I'd put it under my arm. But no one came to the house." This wild goose chase was for nothing.

Barbara has not heard a word since the 23rd. She thinks the ducknapping was an inside job. "I'm sure it was my brother Jim. I even asked him." Jim said that was a canard. "The neighbors probably took it," Jim told her.

"They're sick of your South Side lawn ornaments." Barbara said she didn't think the neighbors would stoop to stealing. Then there's her husband. He seemed happy the duck was gone. "He hates it. I told him I wanted to buy another, and he said, 'Oh, for God's Maybe he took it." You are in a web-foot of intrigue, Barbara.

But the ducknappers will have to have hearts of concrete to ignore her plea: "I want my duck back," she said. "We're moving. How will it find me? It has a whole little wardrobe waiting for it. Even a spring bonnet it never wore. I'll do anything." You've already proved that.

Ransom money would be no problem, either. Barbara could always put it on the bill. Who could blame their opponents for making a little hay when they ran for Congress? 'aboard." Who could blame their opponents 'for making a little hay when they ran for Congress? "The Democrats were saying I was a real dummy, I was Gopher. Who wants Gopher to be their member of Congress?" Grandy recalls of his no? ELAINE JU back. It was taken off her front porch in February.

The ducknappers sent her two letters. She performed the humiliating acts they demanded. But they still haven't delivered the duck. The joke has gone on long enough. "I want my duck," Barbara said.

"We're moving in May." Would you describe it for us? "Yes, it's gray, cold and naked." Naked? "It's a concrete duck," she said. "I dress it in little outfits and set it on my front porch. "I'd just taken off her little Santa suit. I bought her a new Easter outfit, but she never got a chance to wear it. "Baseball season came, and I had a little baseball hat for opening day.

She missed that, too." Ducknappings and other crimes are rare in Sunset Hills, a peaceful suburban community with expensive brick homes and broad green lawns. Lawn ornaments like Barbara's are also rare. She has the only ones on her street: a concrete madonna, and what she calls a "cavalier" with a red jacket, black lantern and white face. Not to mention the concrete duck with the seasonal wardrobe. "The people in my other neighborhood loved it.

They'd come by to see what I had on that crazy duck. The ones here don't seem to have much of a sense of humor." They also don't seem like the sort who would have orchid note paper. The ducknapper notes have all been on that color paper. The letters were cut out of newspapers and magazines. The first note said: "If you want to see that duck again, you will wear a white glove on your hand Sunday, Feb.

3." Barbara said, "I thought it was a joke." But just in case, she wore the glove all day. "There I was, looking like a 48-year-old Michael Jackson. "I got a phone call from a woman who said, 'Do you have your glove Then she hung up. I didn't recognize her voice." Did you have your glove on? "No, but she couldn't see me on the phone in my own home. When I left the house I put it on, in case someone was watching.

I had to go 0 Going Over "Last of Years advice, hour, a and some just Years and have AP Once in Washington, Jones was able to joke about his past. But Grandy was supersensitive when he arrived in Washington, an earnest agriculture expert with little use for his past. Rumor had it that he fired an intern for calling him Gopher. Not true, Grandy says, although he admits to some overcompensation he was very serious, very intense in his quest to shake off Gopher. "It's something that I have not had to live down but it's not something I necessarily need to showcase," he says.

Grandy's role these days is that of an unrepentant moderate Republican in a party tilting rightward. Last summer he chastised the Iowa Republican Party for urging a constitutional amendment against flag-burning. "We come off looking like a bunch of thought police," he told them. When a speaker at a GOP meeting last month denounced single-parent families and urged that government help go only to households in which Mom stays home with the kids, Grandy said the conference had taken on a worrisome "Shiite cast." He's been equally outspoken on whether the National Endowment for the Arts should limit grants to inoffensive projects. Grandy says the conservatives supporting the restrictions, most of them Republicans, were "misguided political opportunists trying to take a broad swipe at the artistic community and say that they were pornographers and blasphemers." Jones took the same positions on flag-burning and the NEA at the risk of offending the Democratic Party conservatives who had sent his evangelical predecessor to the House.

He had "Driving Miss Daisy" to help him make his case for an unfettered NEA. The agency granted $18,000 to Alfred Uhry, an obscure Georgia playwright, resulting in a prize-winning play and the hit movie that was filmed in Jones' district. But some issues have made for awkward moments. Like the time a long-scheduled American Legion appearance occurred the day after Jones voted against the constitutional Your WOMEN ONLY From Cooter Rep. Ben Jones, as trespassing and assault.

As far back as college in Chapel Hill, N.C., through years of theater and film work in the South, Jones says he had spent most of his offstage time "getting messed up" on alcohol. Until one particular morning in 1977. "The rent hadn't been paid for several months. The electricity was cut off," Jones recalls. "I woke up lying on the floor in dts, delirium tremens, the shakes, and I was in a panic.

I was absolutely sure that I was dying. I was in a free fall. I'd lost all control. I did not want to go on living as I was living, and I was very much afraid of dying. I got through that day without a drink and I haven't had one since." At that point, Jones says, he was a veteran of three divorces and "dozens of shattered relationships.

I'd be the last person anyone would ever think would be a political candidate." But he continued working, won the Cooter role, remarried, had a son, and in 1986 took on Patrick Swindall, a congressman identified with the religious right who had a supposed lock on the suburban Atlanta district. Running with little money and lots of publicity about his past, Jones nevertheless managed to win 47 percent of the vote. He woke up the next day and started his 1988 campaign. By then Swindall had been indicted for perjury and was in deep trouble. The race degenerated into a contest between Jones' dark past and Swindall's morass of legal and ethical problems.

Jones walked off with 60 percent of the vote. nmiueii race in ioo. That same year, Jones says, 'Georgia Republicans were saying they found his candidacy "hilarious a two-bit actor from a stupid television Nevertheless, Grandy was elected on his first effort, and Jones made it -on his second try in 1988, reuniting two actors who hadn't been cast together since 1976. That was the year they made "The Lincoln Conspiracy," a forgettable film in which the two 1 i I.k. 11 7: 1 1 "jjiaycu cu-uimspuaiuisui jumi wurcs I -Booth in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

"I think he was shot and I was hanged," Grandy says. "It was a real classic. One of the worst movies I've -ever seen in my life. extern iui uicu uiic-umc intersection in Savannah, to make the movie, Grandy and Jones followed dramatically different paths to television and Washington. For Grandy, it was prep school, Harvard, a year as a congressional aide and on to the insecure life of a I beginning actor in New York City.

He auditioned for anything he could find, including a frozen vegetable commercial in which he played a pea while Henrv Winlflpr whn oninpH TV fame as the Fonz, played an onion. 1 of them got a part. Eventually Grandy landed the role on "The Love Boat" and moved to Los TAngeles. "I didn't think the show would run 13 weeks," he recalls. "I thought, why anybody watch this?" Nine i i i i i Manchester 473 Lafayette Ctr.

227-5001 Lemay Plaza rvyf call Call If You Exercise AT amendment to ban flag-burning. "We should not amend the Bill of Rights because some malcontent burns a flag," he says. What should we do? Here's what Jones, deadpan, said he told the Legionnaires: "The best way to deal with flag-burners is to drop 'em off at the American Legion Hall around 11 on a Friday night." Jones bucked his party leadership by supporting a capital gains tax cut promoted by the GOP. But he toed the line last fall and supported a highly controversial budget compromise. Jones won re-election by a five-point margin he says it would have been six but for the budget vote in a district that has swung back and forth between the parties for years.

He was rewarded with a low-rung Democratic leadership post. Grandy's independence among other things, he supported aid to the Nicaraguan Contras despite his state's strong peace movement also has served him well. His share of the vote last year was nearly 72 percent. In January he was awarded a seat on the influential Ways and Means Committee. The two actors are enjoying the respect they demand as congressmen, the kind they never got as a hick auto mechanic in a baseball cap and a comic cruise ship officer in short pants.

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