The Times from Shreveport, Louisiana • Page 92

BvCOLIN DANGAARD tV- -TrTV It 5 1 vavV HOLLYWOOD Actress Karen Carlson says love was the reason for the breakup of her six-year marriage to "Starsky and Hutch" star David Soul. "David loved me so much," says Karen, "that he wanted to spare me what he is going through now. His personal life is hell, with all the fame, the lack of privacy; 1 with women literally throwing themselves at him. "Now, I am not the most secure person in the world. I need tremendous reassurance.

David just wouldn't have the time to give that to me. "I am sure that, had we continued to be married, I would be in constant pain now. So I think, in a way, he really spared me. "But still, we are closer now than we were when we were married. We have tremendous love for each other." Karen, born in Shreveport, the daughter of a travelling salesman, met David when she was cast in a segment of the television series, "Here Comes the Brides," in 1968.

Married David Soul Within four months they were married, and together their stars began to rise. They moved into homes in New York and Los Angeles and had a son, Jon-Kristjian, now 7. Karen and David separated in 1974, and were divorced last year bringing to reality one of Karen's greatest fears. As she explains: "I never thought I'd get married because of this fear I'd get divorced. I thought that if I was with one man, I'd look somewhere else, and there would be.

another "But when I married David, it was like I had blinders on. I saw one man, and that was that. No other man existed in my life." A kind of shock Soul was just beginning to make a splash as Hutch, when the separation came, and Karen went into a kind of shock. "I tried everything in my power to make our marriage work," she says. "Everything from getting up in the morning trying to look gorgeous.

"Therefore, I don't take it personally that it failed. What I do take personally is that I wasn't enough. I just wasn't enough Karen, who is trim, blonde and beautiful, says at first she was "terrified" of the freedom of being a lone woman in Hollywood. She also worried about being lonely. Today she says: "I am still terrified 6f it all, but 1 enjoy it at the same time." going to know who I tin within a year." She had meanwhile, passed through her ugly duckling stage, and hud noticed how men's heads turned as she passed.

"People were suddenly treating me differently," she says, "but I didn't trust beauty. It had been too soon since I had been ignored." In Hollywood, luck played a bip role in Karen's career. To arrive in Los Angeles without a car is like arriving on a talk show without a tongue. But that's how-Karen found herself. Within days, however, she met a man on the street who lent her a car.

which she drove until it overheated on the freeway, where she left it steaming and running on pre-ignition First assignment Karen also met an agent while she was window shopping in Beverly Hills, and he arranged for her first major assignment being a stand up comic beside Bob Hope. Other jobs followed. Appearances with James Garner, Phyllis Diller and Red Skelton. More permanently, she replaced Raquel Welch as the card girl on The Hollywood Palace. Currently Karen stars in "Matilda." opposite Elliott Gould.

It's the story of a boxing kangaroo that becomes a world champion. Gould is the owner, and Karen is from the ASPCA. When she came to Hollywood. Karen had visions of herself as "the next Carol Burnett." She thought she was very funny. But nobody else did.

Looking back, Karen says: "I was extremely naive, extremely vulnerable. I've always believed that I've had this kind of protective thing around me. "I have never believed anybody could do me wrong, and as a result, nobody ever did. "I also had unbelievable guts. I was completely unafraid.

I look back now and I can't believe the things I did." What she didn't do was allow herself to be used by powerful men. She recalls one agent who took her into his office, showed her a wardrobe full of minks and furs, and said she could wear what she wanted for the evening. She was able to get his help without compromising. Explains Karen: "There is a high mortality rate on the casting couch. If you're interested in being one of the pretty ladies about town, it'll probably happen for you that way.

"But I was not interested in that I've always had a long range design on my life. "I was also helped by the fact that I seem to bring out the protective, fatherly instincts in men." Therapeutic business Although Hollywood and fame played a part in the breakup of Karen and David Soul, the lady insists show business has been therapeutic for her personally. "For me," she says, "part of the learning process was tearing down a lot of walls defences that I had built up so you'd never see the real me. I came from a part of the country where there was not a lot of truth in society. As a result, I learned to hide what I was feeling.

"1 was miserable behind those walls, and I didn't even know it. When started tearing them down, all the pent-up feelings came rushing out. "I feel that if I hadnt become involved in this kind of work that I would have ended up in an institution. I really think that." fttni.miiiitiiTAiffliiiifrM Photo by COLIN DANGAARD Shreveport native Karen Carlson, now Hollywood actress Karen survives Hollywood style "He realizes now he was trying to do too many things. He was running thin." Karen is surviving in Hollywood by demonstrating the kind of courage that got her started here in the first place.

She actually hitchhiked into town after winning a brace of beauty contests in the South, including Miss Arkansas. She was first runner-up in Miss America. "I had $300 in cash in my pocket," says Karen, "and I didn't know a single person in Los Angeles. I had come because I wanted adventure, and I was curious. "The afternoon I arrived the Watts riots had just begun.

I left my hotel for a walk, and the police sent me back, saying that with my southern accent I wasn't going anywhere that night. "So I ran up to my room, barricaded the door, and slept in the bathtub because it was close to a fire escape." Karen had told her mother she would "either be home in two weeks or be on the telephone." Two weeks later, she took a cab to Warner Brothers, where she strolled confidently on the lot, met a sympathetic casting director and was re-' commended to an acting school. She telephoned home, and insisted the future looked promising. For Karen, the real world was a trip in culture shock. She remembers her childhood as being "lonely, isolated." As a kid she was fat, and therefore shunned.

Although there was "tremendous love and togetherness" in the home, Karen's father was continually on the road. "It -was like I was always saying goodbye to somebody I loved," she says. Karen had planned on going to college in Switzerland, but instead spent six months in the hospital with hepatitis. Thus she ended up at the University of Arkansas, and remembers going on the campus for the first time with her father and declaring: "Okay, if I have to go to this school, they're all Change in Soul She has also noted a change in Soul, who is a kind of Marlon Brando of television, giving no interviews and avoiding crowds. "I had lunch with him the other day," says Karen, "and he was the most relaxed and un frenzied I had seen him for three years.

It was really delightful. "Usually, he drives me crazy. By the time I have been with him for an hour, I am so uptight! Having a conversation with him is like trying to grab something that is never there. Just to get a complete sentence out of him is an achievement. "But the other day, he got whole stories out." Karen credits the change to a new direction in Soul's career.

8-F March 5, 1978 The Shreveport Times.