Tallahassee Democrat from Tallahassee, Florida • 151

TV stars hurt by overexposure I 1 1 "I A I 'xv. 4 1 0 )l i Li i By JACK E. ANDERSON Knfflht-Rktdr ntw Mrvlct If television keeps on de-glamorizing its actors and actresses by pressing them into kooky public appearances, there's a danger they will come to seem no more special than most of us who watch them on the home screens. Case in point is Lynda Goodfriend, a pretty, supple-bodied, green-eyed brunette, who plays Ron Howard's steady girlfriend on ABC's "Happy Days" and who has appeared in two other series. Goodfriend got a drama degree from Southern Methodist University, spent five years in New York working as a professional dancer while studying with big-time drama coaches, then went to Hollywood and worked herself to a frazzle breaking into television.

She is now recognizable enough that her autographs and photos are in demand. Scripts for other TV series are being offered. And what do they have Miss Goodfriend doing in her spare time? They have her playing outfield on a TV studio softball team. And on tour, no less. IN THE EYES OF ANY old-fashioned beholder like this writer, snapping a softball across a baseball diamond is not, or ought not to be, the pasttime of a budding Ingrid Bergman or Katharine Hepburn.

Miss Goodfriend bade me not to be a fuddy-duddy about it. "It's fun. All of the TV show casts out there have teams and we play each other," she said. "We go out two or three times each season and play other velebrity teams to help with local fund raising." Lynda Goodfriend does other things hardly characteristic of developing glamor girls. She flies her own plane, and for two months last year she joined a tour group in Nepal in the Himalayas.

While there she scaled a high peak. "It's good for me. During all those years I spent in New York, studying and touring in summer stock, I never had a moment to myself, never any vacation. It was work, work, work. I'm enjoying myself for the first time." When Miss Goodfriend left high school (in North Miami) at 16 to attend SMU in Dallas, neither her mother nor father (who died four years ago) nor her high school classmates had any inkling of what was to transpire.

She had done some acting in high-school class plays, but she went to Dallas on a math scholarship. Once there, however, she took up dancing and switched her major to drama. Goodfriend said she was defying the odds. During her junior year at North Miami High, she and four classmates spent the summer at a drama school in New York. "The instructor told me to forget acting as a career and go home and get married or do something else," she said.

Lynda Goodfriend de-glamorized by publicity THAT WAS THREE YEARS AGO. Lynda has remained a regular on "Happy Days," and in the meantime had a lead role in the "Blansky's Beauties" series, which folded in a hurry. "They didn't know I could dance because out there you never tell them you're a dancer. They think if you can tap-dance you can't speak." Then she was cast in another bomb, "Who's Watching the which also had a quick demise. Lynda is continuing in the "Happy Days" series but is troubled by a burden she shares with many young performers in sitcoms.

"You get so stereotyped. I want to break out, and that's another stage in my education learning to strike out on my own. I'd really like to become a serious actress." But, she admitted with a despairing toss of her hands, no such roles have come her wav. "I've been offered a Her dancing in Dallas led to an impulsive desire to seek a career in New York. Five years of quasi-success as a dancer there followed, in the course of which she met John Travolta, who was also finding his way as a dancer.

Then, impulsively again always do things she headed for Hollywood. Her only contact out there was a theater troubleshoot- couple of comedy series, but if I can find something else, er she had met in New York. But he was Gary Marshall, that's what I'd prefer to do." who had become one of TV's most successful comedy Meanwhile, there's "Haoov Davs" to fall back on. producers, and Lynda got some auditions. Still, for six walking on the beach near her Malibu Beach apartment, months she worked as a waitress in a pizza palace before she landed a job on "Happy Days." "I had actually read for polishing her aviation technique and doing a lot of serious thinking.

Oh yes, and heeding those occasional calls to a part on 'Laverne and Shirley'," she said. piay Dau Pw V-TV WEEK, Apri l-Aprt 14, Wf.