Angie Dickinson & David Janssen: Is It Love Or Excedrin Headache No. 41?
Actually it was only natural—some say just a matter of time—for David Janssen and Angie Dickinson to find each other and experience that instant sensation of attraction. After all, David has always been enamored of sexy blondes and Angie’s preference for virile, bedroom-eyed men is well known. Perhaps their stars would have crossed sooner if both had not been playing that age-old Hollywood game of save your marriage. Perhaps they would have sought solace in each other’s arms months ago if both had not hoped that their respective unions could be salvaged. Yet it seems, at least for the time being, that both have decided to get off that marriage-go-round and try to regain some semblance of emotional security—maybe with each other!
Indeed, the twosome is an interesting one, one which has caused Hollywood wags to work overtime, commenting on how happy Angie and David appeared together at star-studded affairs as well as intimate dinners-for-two. Since both Angie and David have active imaginations and a keen sense of humor, they seem to enjoy flouting their relationship for photographers. They embrace, kiss, hold hands and erupt into childish laughter at the drop of a hat and do not seem interested in hiding the spark of affection that is obviously growing between them. They couldn’t care less that all the intimate details of their affair are grist for the gossip mill and scandal mags.
Yet exactly what is growing? Exactly what is between these two superstars of the mini-screen? Is it a rebound affair fated to burn itself out if either’s estranged mate beckons them homeward? Or is it really a romance heated not by bitterness or a sense of failure, but by true passion flamed by the knowledge of devotion and respect and love? Then, perhaps, it’s just an interlude between future romances for both of them? Of course, no one knows for sure right now, but one . thing is certain: Friends are worried that both are bargaining for more than they can handle, that what they might think will be a wildly glorious fling, will really turn out to be Excedrin headache number 41! And David will have to follow his own commercial advice for fast, fast, fast relief.
From the beginning of her separation from husband Burt Bacharach, Angie maintained: “We want to want each other again!” Indeed they were both wise enough to realize that if they were going to solve problems in their marriage, they needed some distance from each other, some perspective. Naturally there are a million and one theories about the real reason they separated, but Angie and Burt rarely discuss the matter openly, preferring to try to mend fences in privacy. Yet no one can deny that professional pressures had to be a major factor, that Angie’s success on Police Woman might not have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it certainly made the load unbearably heavy. As Angie’s star rose to “super” level, Burt found himself struggling to keep up with the tempo of his earlier success. Though Angie claimed often, “I’d hate it if I were a bigger star than my husband,” that situation seemed at hand. One close friend commented, shortly after the Dickinson-Bacharach break up. “I don’t remember a time when their careers have been on the rise or on the decline at the same time.”
Naturally that made for stress and strain in the home and ultimately the separation. Now Angie, trying not to be bitter, is Monday-morning quarterbacking, trying to find the cause of the problem. Says the 45-year-old actress: “There are times when I’m sorry I ever heard of Police Woman . . . times when I want out so badly, I could scream. I don’t have to work this hard—I don’t need it—I don’t want it . . . . I suppose Burt and I knew what we were getting into when I took over Police Woman. . . . I told Burt dinners-wouldn’t be on schedule and I wouldn’t be home when Nikki returned from school. And we both accepted the fact that I wouldn’t be able to go out at nights because I needed as much rest as I could get. . . . It meant long hours, late dinners and eight hours sleep a night for me to get the engine working properly for the next day.
“But it was worse than either of us thought.”
It seemed the harder Angie worked, the more problems arose at home. Burt was, and still is a very social creature and he had always enjoyed partying with his lovely wife. For a time he would wait at home for Angie to return, but after a while he began going to parties and openings by himself while Angie was catching up on her required sleep. Naturally people began to comment and after the split, Angie caustically claimed: “I’m unhappy about it. But I know several women who are delighted.”
Perhaps time has soothed that particular wound, for recently Angie claimed that jealousy had nothing to do with their decision to separate: “The only way to work out our problems, we thought, was to miss each other a little bit. But we didn’t separate because we are both sex symbols. That wasn’t difficult to live with. It didn’t cause jealousy.
“It was gratifying to come home at night to a man a lot of other women would like to be with. Most women would like to go home and find Robert Redford waiting for them. I had my own Redford and Burt had me. It was fun. After all, I don’t think two sex symbols have lived together as a married couple for quite a while. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were the last. Or John Kennedy and Jackie.”
Well, we all know what happened to Frank and Ava and some say that Jack and Jackie were anything. but great lovers at the time of his death. Unfortunately, Angie and Burt seem to be following suit—though for months Angie has held out hope for their reunion. When asked about other involvements just weeks before the news of her dates with David Janssen hit the headlines, Angie replied: “I can’t have an affair with a man unless I love him. I haven’t found anyone else to love yet.”
However, in light of her recent activities, Angie seems to be negating her last statement. As for David, well, he’s not adverse to being Jinked with a sexy lady like Angie—after all, he and wife Dani’s volcanic relationship is well known and so are his “flings” during their cooling off periods. Only last fall David was seen escorting songwriter Carole Connors around town while Dani steamed at home. He was the first to admit that part of the problem he had with Dani was that he had been drinking a bit too much—a problem which had plagued David in his first marriage to Elbe and in his romance with Rosemary Forsyth.
Unhappiness and a desire to find himself led David to Carole. He stopped drinking and found he had a talent for writing lyrics for her music. Then he claimed: “It’s the first time I’m doing what I love doing.” Together they worked on the theme for, the film Rocky and Carole claims: “He actually came up with some fabulous words—some are in the theme for Rocky that I wrote—not the lyrics in the movie, but the ones on the record.” Of their romance Carole claimed: “To know him is to love him. And he treats me as a person. I adore the man, but I know he may go back to her—for a while.”
And that he did! Actually, Dani and David’s reconciliations are as volatile as their break-ups and as a proof of their endurance after his fling with Carole, David moved them from his super-safe penthouse apartment to a $400,000 Malibu home. Indeed, that was quite a concession, for David has always shunned houses, claiming that an apartment is much safer, that particularly celebrities always have to worry about their house being broken into when they leave for the day. But what Dani wanted, was what she got—at least for the time being. It wasn’t long after moving day that all hell broke loose in the Janssen household once more, leaving Dani to soothe her battle scars alone in her brand new house. David, moved out again and made the headlines as Angie’s escort.
So much for- ancient history. . . . Right now, what everyone is concerned about is the direction David and Angie are taking. Obviously the attraction is real enough, but one wonders exactly where a relationship like theirs can really go. Angie is a determined, talented woman who felt it was necessary for her character and her career to keep on with Police Woman when she knew full well that it was contributing to the disintegration of her marriage to Burt. David is a moody, sometimes sullen man, characterized by a cynical wit and a surprising charm. His woman have always taken second place in the career department and many say the reason he and Rosemary Forsyth didn’t make it was because she just couldn’t subordinate her career to his. Though Dani never really made a name for herself as an actress, she did meet David when the two of them were contract players for Universal years ago. Yet every time the mere mention of Dani’s resurrecting her “career” came up, it was quickly shoved under the mat, with a comment like, “David prefers me at home.”
Would Angie Dickinson, lady and liberationist, be able to take such a situation for long? Doubtfully!
Then, too, there’s David’s admitted insecurities, his brooding quality that at first seems merely a contrast to set off Angie’s bubbling personality. But when you go a little deeper, maybe it’s just another built-in emotional time bomb. David claims: “I’m a born worrier. I’m always most concerned about how my work turns out, about what people will think of me. The worst time I ever had was when I did things that I didn’t want to do.”
In David’s life that seems to encompass quite a bit. As a child, David preferred to be by himself. His mother Berniece claims: “I couldn’t get him out of the house! He wanted to read. He listened to records of Beethoven, Chopin and read all the classics. He was a different child. I knew from the beginning that something big was slated for him. Not just as ordinary child playing, but something big.” An admitted stage mother, Mrs. Janssen pushed David towards acting and he recalls: “She wanted me to be a child actor. I did as I was told. I did my first picture, a walk-on when I was just eight.”
Naturally resentment built up within David and now he claims: “I do hold things inside. I did have a small, peptic ulcer prior to Fugitive, strangely enough. It was not a severe ulcer. In my terminology, it was a small one. The doctor gave me what I thought was very good advice. He said, ‘You’ve got it up in the brain region and that’s where you have to get rid of it.’ All the pills and diet only alleviate the pain. You can make it subside only with learning to control your particular emotions.”
However, as well as David seems to be able to control his emotions now, friends feel it’s just a matter of time before there’s an explosion a la Dani! After all, Angie is a personality in her own right, and though it might seem fun and games now, the same pressures that beset her and Burt could just as well crop up between her and David. There’s one more strike they have against them, too—the fact that this is a rebound romance and that neither one is really over their respective spouses to get fully involved with someone else. David has played the yo-yo all too often with Dani and Angie couldn’t pick anyone more dangerous at this point in her life. Up till now she had been escorted by friends and cast members of Police Woman when she needed a date; so it is only natural that she’d want to find more than just companionship on a Platonic level. But not with David Janssen—he’s Trouble for her, with a capital T!
Friend and fellow actor Earl Holliman has remained silent on the subject because he respects Angie, but he has told close pals that he doesn’t want to’ see her hurt and that she’s a prime target for heartbreak right now. If you are adept at reading between the lines, perhaps you can see what Earl is worried about when he says: “Angie is marvelous. There is something very touching about her. She has a vulnerable quality. . . . She generates a very different kind of feminity. She insists on doing some of the dangerous stunts on Police Woman herself—like hanging from cliffs—yet she’s so vulnerable you want to put your arm around her to protect her. She doesn’t open up to strangers. It took a while before I realized just how sensitive she is, how deeply she cares for people. I’ve never known her to be too busy to give her daughter, Nikki, her undivided attention. I remember the time I escorted Angie to an award show, and in the rush of leaving, she got behind the wheel. We went six blocks when she stopped and asked me to drive. ‘I feel awkward driving when a man is in the car,’ she said. Now, that’s a woman!”
And that’s a woman who could be hurt—unintentionally, of course—by a man like David Janssen. Maybe both should take the age-old doctor’s advice: take two aspirin and go to sleep—for it looks like a headache could be on the horizon!
THE END
—BY NORMAN RUSSELL
See ABC’s Police Woman.
It is a quote. SCREEN STARS MAGAZINE JULY 1977
