Press and Sun-Bulletin from Binghamton, New York • 82

Profile TV actor Withers loves his Binghamton roots Mark claims he feels strong affection for his Binghamton roots. "I still call myself a country boy. I liked the fact that it was very much out in the boonies and I got to experience the country aspect of it," Mark says, "It's gorgeous out there." Mark's parents are divorced, and his father now lives in Florida. His mother, Norma Lenzo, still lives in the same house in which Mark grew up. She was surprised by her son's career switch but says she is proud of him.

"All through high school he was in every play," she says, "and I guess that was his life ambition although I never realized it at the time." Mark keeps in touch with his mother regularly by phone, and even if he didn't, chance are she would still know what was going on in her son's life. I I 1 By RICHARD KLEIN Mark Withers prefers not to operate according to normally accepted cliches. Mark, born and raised in Nimmonsburg and a graduate of Chenango Valley High School, plays Ted Dinard, who is homosexual, in ABC's Dynasty, which airs Monday nights at 9. His interpretation of the character is a sensitive one. Mark does not portray Dinard as the stereotypical gay man involved in the stereotypical homosexual relationship.

He is not a limp-wristed caricature. Rather, Mark sees Dinard as engaged in a mature relationship with a member of the same sex. The role, according to Mark, gives him an opportunity to express his own view on the subject of relationships. In any human relationship, he believes, it isn't the form that matters, but its essence. "They in fact have a full-fledged deep profound caring for one another," says Mark.

"Even though this relationship does not on the surface meet what are usually accepted standards in terms of form, that is a heterosexual relationship, the quality of the relationship between these two guys is really primo. Mark did not arrive at an acting career according to convention. After starring in three sports at Chenango Valley High School, Mark went to Penn State in 1965 on a football scholarship. But he does not look back on a wild and crazy Binghamton childhood. Excitement for him meant playing miniature golf at the foot of Johnson Road.

At the time, he had other career plans in mind. "You're gonna be real disappointed," Mark said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "I was going to be a Methodist minister. I lived a real staid, straight, starched life." Admittedly wavering about the ministry while at Penn State, Mark stumbled into acting. His theater history professor needed some "actors." He wanted some rather large men (Mark is 6 feet 5), to play soldiers.

"Just to walk on and be there," he explains. "I'm no dummy I could smell an 'A' a mile away, so I put my hand up." Bored by standing around for two hours not doing anything, Mark says he figured how to use his time on stage constructively. He memorized the play. Then, "when we had the cast party I imbibed a little and they tell me I was brilliant. I did the entire play." Mark was hooked, and discarded his plans for the ministry.

"Acting is a real addiction. It's a bug that bites you and boy, are you in trouble after that." "I don't know how mothers do this, but for the longest time when I wasn't terribly public she would tell me something that she knew about that maybe was only a week old in my life. There's a network down there and its all through mothers," he joked. These days when he is not at work, one could see Mark standing on a California beach, wearing a T-shirt and a pin saying "Ask me about the Hunger Project." He is a member of the World Hunger Project, an organization dedicated to ending death by starvation. Life is not all work for Mark.

He says he is passionately in love with a woman that he describes as the epitome of femininity. He also plays on network basketball teams, and writes his own music, which he terms "rockabilly He says he hopes to land a record deal soon. But he also spends much time gaining nourishment from his main craft, acting. "It's an ongoing process. It's not something you arrive at, where somebody hands you a piece of paper and says, well, now you've got it." Though most people, Mark says, are content talking about the level of his acting on Dynasty, Mark would like people to address the issue of homosexuality.

"I am suggesting they take a look at the quality of the relationship between these two people. That's where the gold is. If they do take a look past the form and get in touch with the quality being shared there and talked about there, I think that they would be pleasantly surprised." It is this essence that Mark is striving for in life. "Who cares whether you do it as a farmer in Indiana or whether you do it as a real estate agent in Southern California. The form is not important.

This was a direct opportunity for me to really make that statement publicly." Mark Withers was an athlete He arrived in Los Angeles in 1967, and has lived there ever since. Mark did not gain notoriety overnight. There were many lean years. He appeared in several productions at the Pasadena Playhouse and worked as a short-order cook, managed a McDonald's and repossessed cars. After a two-season run and an Equity contract with the play The Owl and the Pussycat and guest spots on episodic television, Mark co-starred in the CBS series Kaz with Ron Leibman, Dick O'Neill and Patrick O'Neal.

He has had many commercials and guest-starring roles prior to his current role on Dynasty. Though he has lived in Los Angeles almost 14 years, squbanna ducer David Selznick still "had no leading lady. The fire was started and stopped eight times during the night. Finally- the scene was finished. Selznick's brother Myron arrived, drunk.

He had with him a little known actress named Vivien Leigh, and he called out loudly: "Here, genius, I want you to meet Scarlett O'Hara." The rest is well, urn, ah history. Darrel Burkhardt Magazine section of The Sunday Prest, Parkway East, Binghamton, N.Y. 13902. Darrel Burlchardt, editor Scarlett fever There are a few masterpieces of the art of film making that most of us have viewed many times. It doesn't matter how many times you've seen The Wizard of Oz, recently given its annual showing.

You'll still find a bit here and a piece there to appreciate for the first time. Another movie you can't see too much of is Gone With the Wind, due for another run tonight and Tuesday on CBS, along with an hour and 15 minutes' worth of commercials. But you can do much more than watch films like these. You can specialize. Several books tell all there is to tell about the making of Oz and GWTW.

You can wind up oozing with Oz and suffering from Scarlett fever. You can even make a specialty of one scene from Gone With the Wind. Roland Flamini, in his Scarlett, Rhett and a Cast of Thousands, goes on for pages and pages about the burning of Atlanta. It was the first scene to be filmed, because the Selznick Studio had all those sets to burn from such other movies as The Last of the Mohicans, King Kong, Garden of Allah and Little Lord Fauntleroy. The night the cameras rolled, Los Angeles newspapers were carefully fed anonymous tips that the Selznick Studio was in flames.

Reporters and photographers were sent by the dozen, says Flamini in his book. Work on the film had begun, but pro Profile .......2 Washington St. ...........3 Quiz, Jumble, Crossword At home ..7 Specialty of the house 8 ON THE COVER: It's a street with a past. Highlights of that history fill pages 3, 4 and 5. The Washington Street 1981 photo is by Keith Hitchens; the 1890 view was provided by the Broome County Historical Society.

2-Bingrwmton, N.Y. The Sunday Press, Mar. 22, 1981.