The Times from Shreveport, Louisiana • Page 102

It Karen Carlson -g, 4 Beauty Queen No More By JIM MONTGOMERY Times Amusements Editor Shreveport native Karen Carlson has her first major film role in "The Candidate" pregnant with Jon-Kristjian (young son of Karen and her "husband, actor David Soul) but I won't do commercials where I have to be beautiful." There began to show a glimmer of what she was really talking about when she mentioned her film character as an "exploited" woman. The obvious question: Why is she not going to use the Miss America thing? She was quiet for a moment, tracing a circle on the table with her finger. "At the time of the pageant, I don't think (another pause) "I was very naive then, and I didn't think in terms of being MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Karen Carlson is not the fragile, constantly smiling child you may remember from those days in the 1960s when she wore little rbinestone tiaras, married the handsome prince in a storybook wedding and rode off in a golden coach to movieland. It may be that she really never wos that person, even though that's the image she had to live with.

Karen, after five years of work and waiting, is now standing by to see what happens when her first major film, "The Candidate," goes into national release. It's only a beginning in the terminology of show business, yet for the young actress who has fought to get there, it's a major plateau in her career. Karen Carlson is a native of Shreveport, still calls the city home 'Hi' to Mom" was one of her 'requests during our interview), very much a daughter of the South and an extremely determined young woman when it comes to her film career. In "The Candidate" she plays Nancy McKay, the wife of a yvirg oolitician olave bv P.jb-ert Redford, daughter-in-law of an old-line politician played by Mnlvyn Douglas a woman who, due to her "second place" role in life, is in perfect position to be exploited as an object, as a oufolic relation advantage to her husband, as a smiler and sayer-of-right-things. The territory Ls familiar to Karen.

With a newsman frcum New York in attendance, she sat down for an interview last week a train wheeling down Florida's eastern coast. It was pretty standard for a few minutes talk about the film, about film in general want to make a statement, start a change. actresses she ad mires (Ingrid Bergman, Helen Hayes, Glenda Jackson, Joanne Woodward, in no special order). Then came the question from home. It concerned one of my favorite Karen Carlson stories, about the night she was named first runnerup to Miss America (Vonda Kay van Dyke) in 1964.

As her name was called out in the final moments of the pa-peant, only one thought sprang to her mind. It was the realization that, in the furious rush of changing clothes between segments of the show, her dressers had neglected to include her underpants. There she stood, in full beauty pageant regalia, with an unseen but vital element of attire missing. The anecdote caught Karen by surprise, embarrassed her a little (for which I apologized), but it certainly loosened her up for the interview. "Oh! How did you know about that?" After a flustered moment during which the newsman from New York was asking, "Wait, let me get this straight You were a runnerup to Miss America?" Karen recovered.

"You caught me by surprise." she laughed. "I've never used the Miss America thing in mv film career and I don't intend to." (A later check of her biography, as issued by Warner confirmed her statement. The only mention is a Cotton Bowl Queen title.) At the moment she said it, though, my eyebrows went up. The beauty queen syndrome is well known in Hollywood, and many have attempted to capital-he on it. "No, I haven't," she reaffirmed.

"I've never even done a 'pretty' commercial. I don't want to. I've done dog food commercials, spoofs, even one for diapers when I was hugely But when it came to entering the Miss Arkansas pageant, the next step, I balked. Dad said go ahead and do it. "The only reason I went on into the Miss America was Dad.

At the Arkansas pageant, he'd never seen me sing on a stage. When I came out, I could see my parents and I saw the look on his face He was so proud. "Because it meant so much to him, I went through with the Miss America thing. Vonda Kay (van Dyke, the winner) was the only one there who knew Dad had died. She helped me through the whole thing.

"I've come to resent the whole beauty thing now. There were lots of people who helped me, and I'm grateful to them, but not to the idea of being a beauty queen." Karen has a saying that she brought up time and again in the interview: "Everything that happens, happens for a purpose." What, then, was the purpose of her pageant experience? "I know one reason the beauty thing happened to me." she said, smiling and positive. "In the beauty things, I had to meet the public, smile a lot, learn public relations, also politics that was during the Faubus-Rockefeller campaign and I got used a lot all the things that my character had to do in 'The I was able to call up all of this, and my feelings about it, in playing Nancy, who Ls a woman exploited as the candidate's wife." That round of the conversation over, the newsman from New York, fascinated by our discussion of Shreveport and environs, asked about growing-up-in the-South, what made it special. "Kow can you say it?" Karen responded. "My parents.

Growing up in the country, where you can walk, see crickets and cows I've tried to explain it to David, but he doesn't really understand. "When I was a small child, my mother used to help a black woman with ironing. We'd go to the black woman's house and I'd go out in a field and pick cotton. My first friend was a little black girl who was deaf and dumb." The reporter, surprised, asked, "What ever happened to her?" "I don't know," Karen still remembering other southern memories. We continued to play "remember" and "do you know" through the afternoon and at dinner that evening in Miami Beach's Hotel Fountainbleau.

A vegetarian, she refused the great bleeding slab of roast beef proffered by a waiter and dined on green beans and potatoes. Plans for the future aren't all that definite, though "The Candidate" may change the situation. Above all else in her career, she wants to be a good actress. have a great desire to be a character actress, but my physical appearance is against it. The roles I'll get will be dumb blondes, naive kids, a quote-unquote bitch.

I'll just have to wait for age. I'm interested in playing fascinating women queens, Eleanor Roosevelt, Zel-da Fitzgerald women who've had outstanding lives." Meanwhile, there's "a full life at home, with David, with my beautiful son" and working toward the next plateau in her film career. One last question: Anything more to say to the folks back home? "Yes. Don't judge me. I've been judged enough." Amusements Movies Theater Art Music exploited.

Then, after I began to travel for the pageant, I began to realize what was happening." Another question: Didn't her father die shortly before the Miss America pageant? "Yes. It was mostly because of him that I went on with the beauty pageant thing. My father had always said, 'You're really going to be something "My sorority put me up as a contestant in the Miss University of Arkansas contest. I won and my folks were very proud. 18-F Sunday, July 16, 1972 The Shreveport Times.