The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 315

CALENDAR problem," said Kate Cap- 'Mi shaw, "is that I'm not a movie So I had difficulty un -St li 1 he derstanding Steven. He talks in movie language, you see. He'd say, "Remember that scene in "It Happened One Night" the one where Claudette Colbert did such-and-such? That's what I want here." And I'd say, 'Steven, I never saw that And he'd groan and reply, 'Kate, how can I possibly communicate with you. Despite such apparent difficulties, director Steven Spielberg did manage to get his meaning across to Kate Capshaw, the 30-year-old actress who stars as a blowzy Shanghai cabaret singer in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" and shares Harrison Ford's death-defying adventure. Few actresses, indeed, have this year enjoyed such continuous exposure in a movie.

She is in the film from first frame to last. This, of course, provides no guarantee of a glittering future witness the fate of most of the Bond girls. But despite the fact that not all critics were as smitten with her as was Spielberg "a natural comedienne," he says, "a cross between Ann Sothern and Lucille Ball" she still has a lot going for her. For starters, she's got three more films backed up awaiting release this year. To help offset some of the less flattering reviews "She seems to have been hired for her shriek," wrote Times Film Critic Sheila Benson several Hollywood friends called to congratulate her on what they called her "Carole Lombard quality." The only problem was that Capshaw knew nothing about Lombard and had never seen any of her movies.

"Really." she said the other day before setting off for London where "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is to have a royal premiere this week. "I must get hold of some of those old movies and study them. Otherwise, I'm never going to know what people like Steven are talking about." clearing and all those animals keep scaring me. but Harrison and Ke ignore me and keep on playing cards. I'm afraid my fear of snakes must have cost Steven a couple of hundred thousand dollars shooting that new scene." Understandably, she now feels she made a wise move when she quit her teaching Job in Ashland, and with her husband.

Bob Capshaw, and daughter, Jessica, moved to New York to seek an acting career. She kept herself afloat doing commercials before landing her first movie in 1981 "A Little Sex" with Tim Mathe-son. Later, she appeared with Mare Winningham in the CBS-TV movie "Missing Children." By the time Spielberg asked to see her, she had completed two more films "Windy City" with John Shea, directed by Armyan Bernstein, and "Dream-scape" with Dennis Quaid and Max Von Sydow. And immediately after she finished work on "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," she was cast in "Best Defense" with Dudley Moore and Eddie Murphya movie directed by Willard Huyck and produced by Gloria Katz, the team that wrote "Indiana Jones" and was involved with "American Graffiti." "Which means I will have four movies out this year," she said. In the days when she was doing commercials for shampoo and mouth fresheners in New York, Kate Capshaw's dream was to be actress like Meryl Streep.

"One day I was on the bus taking Jessica to school and daydreaming, wondering what it must be like to be Meryl Streep. happily married with a family and with a terrific career that everyone respected," she said. "And then the bus stopped, and I looked out of the window into a little French pastry shop and there she was. sitting reading the paper. I Just stared.

"Then the other day at a Hollywood party with Army (since the collapse of her marriage, her companion has been Armyan Bernstein, there she was again sitting at the next table to us. I started to cry. I kept remembering how I'd felt that day I'd seen her from the bus and now here I was sitting almost next to her." As part of the promotion for "Indiana Jones," Life magazine look Capshaw back to the school in Missouri where for two years she had taught children with learning disabilities. "All the time 1 was there. I'd asked the principal to let me have my nameplate on the door of my little classroom, but I never did get It," she said.

"So finally the Kate "fm afraid my fear of snakes must have cost Steven (Spielberg) a couple of hundred thousand dollars shooting that new scene." CAPSHAW: HER CAREER IS NOT CONSTRICTING By RODERICK MANN on a sense of humor." So what films did he make her see? "The African Queen" with Katharine Hepburn (and Humphrey Bogart) and "A Guy Named Joe" with Irene Dunne and Spencer Tracy For Willie Scott? "Well, yes." she said. "But the woman he set out to capture on the screen somehow never got captured. Instead, Willie Scott developed a personality of her own. He liked what she became, though, and thought our little group Indiana, Willie and ShortRound Iplayed by 12-year-old Ke Huy Quan worked well. "The movie was great fun to make.

I know they're doing a documentary about it the one about the making of 'Raiders of the Lost Ark" did very well but what I'd like to see is a film made up of our oultakes (scenes filmed but not used in the final version). Some of them were hysterically funny. We must have done five takes a day Just for our own enjoyment." Only when it came to coping with snakes did Kate Capshaw lose her sense of humor. One scene, which was to have been filmed in Sri Lanka, called for a 14 -foot. 150-pound boa constrictor to wrap itself around her while she was bathing.

The idea petrified her. "The animal trainer assured me I had nothing to worry about, and a lot of people came up and told me such snakes were harmless, but it didn't help," she said. "If you truly have a gut response to something, nobody can possibly rationalize you out of it. And I was terrified that my fear would somehow communicate itself to the snake, which would then turn dangerous." "Seeing me in tears. Steven came up and said, 'I won't make you do He scrapped the scene, and on the plane back to London (where the majority of the movie was shot In a studio) he wrote that other scene where in a Kale Capshaw landed her role in the film through the sort of coincidence that would be dismissed as far-fetched in a trashy novel.

A William Morris agent, whose office handles her, was Jogging in Tarzana one morning with Mike Fenton, Spielberg's casting director. The subject of the movie came up, and the agent told Fenton about their client. Days later she got a summons to see Spielberg. "I was so nervous." she said. "I stood there talking away while he fiddled with a video camera in the corner, getting it ready, I thought.

Finally I saidi 'When do we start?" and he said: 'We've started. I've been taping you for 15 Convinced that he had found the right actress to play the feisty singer Willie Scott, Spielberg packed her off to sec some old movies and their leading ladies. "He had a firm idea of the kind of woman Willie should be." Capshaw said. "Strong and spunky and with a good a 73 "9 a kids and I cut out 'Miss Capshaw' in paper and stuck it on the door. "It's peeled away a lot now, but you can still make out my name.

And seeing it there was very strange. It made me realize just how lucky I've been. Calendar Movies, Page 22.