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For a second the promo catches everyone by surprise. It looks as if the show is about to start a minute early. There is an audible catching of breaths as the children in their nightgowns lean forward from their perch on the end of the bed. Even Mac, the Yorkshire terrier, seems to freeze. But it is only a "teaser" and after a moment they all relax.
It is Wednesday, Oct. 6, and the first Filthy Rich episode of the new season is about to air on CBS. Gathered around a television set in her bedroom is a small group of Dixie Carter’s family and friends, among them her two daughters, her mother, her aunt and her boyfriend, actor Hal Holbrook, whom she met two years ago while filming a TV-movie. As the deliciously wicked "Carlotta Beck" (a sort of comic J.R. in drag), Carter is, for all intents and purposes, the star of the show.
"Shhh," she whispers frantically from her cross-legged position on the floor. "It’s starting! It’s starting!"
Uproarious laughter and applause break out sporadically around the room every few minutes during the next half hour. To a crescendo of cheers Dixie rises at the finale, switches off the set, shaking her head in a slightly bewildered gesture, and walks out of the room.
"The reviews aren’t good," Holbrook says, looking after her with concern. "But the best shows are always panned at the beginning." He knows that Carter cannot take another loss.
At 43, she is full of strange inconsistencies, doubts and fears. Including, very possibly, fear of success -- since she has never really had a hit.
A remarkable-looking woman even by Hollywood standards, Carter sailed through life on the wings of beauty, finding that most things came easily until the onset of middle age. "It has to come to a woman by the time she’s 35 years old," says Carter, "that pretty is not what she can count on any more and she better be able to do something else -- if she’s an actress she better be able to act."
Filthy Rich is an offbeat show that satirizes the "Blood and Money" appeal of nighttime soaps. It is peopled with a family of eccentrics (not the least of whom is the cryogenically frozen patriarchal head) and supported by a cast of thoroughbred performers. More than a year after the first pilot was made, three episodes aired consecutively last summer. The ratings were astronomical. So CBS pushed it through for the fall lineup, displacing Mama Malone.
Awed by the prospect of auditioning for the lead, Dixie originally tried out for a supporting role. But it was obvious that she was right for Carlotta. "Dixie is a very elegant Southern lady," says costar Michael Lombard, who plays her husband Marshall on the show. "She has a very sophisticated way of speaking. I auditioned with three other actresses, all good. But none of them had the kind of spitfire delivery that Dixie excels at."
"If the show is a hit," says executive producer Larry White, "Dixie is going to make it very big."
Actually, if the show isn’t canceled after this season, Dixie should be relieved. Yanked off the air in November when the ratings failed, production nevertheless continued while CBS did some fancy maneuvering. Last month it returned in a new time slot, on Mondays. "Now we’re ready to sail," says Carter. "I think [the show] has enormous potential, and I hope we find an audience this time around."
It’s one of those eerie gray Sundays in Los Angeles. In front of the magnificent Spanish-style home that Dixie Carter rents in Beverly Hills, the foot-stomping chords of "Sweet Blindness" emanates from a stereo out onto the street. Near the garden gate, however, it becomes apparent that the entertainment is live.
Inside, what could easily be an imposing house is instead relaxed and comfortable, gracious and warm. There is an undercurrent of excitement -- as if something wonderful is about to happen. The aura, like the music, is Dixie Carter.
In the kitchen her visiting mother is baking trays of Dixie’s favorite Southern biscuits. Daughter Ginna, 13, runs upstairs to change out of this morning’s church clothes and 12-year-old Mary Dixie, a candidate for school president, works on a speech for her seventh-grade class.
For a while the girls sit quietly mouthing the words to a medley of Porter and Gershwin tunes their mother, accompanied by her pianist, is singing. She chokes up sentimentally over the words and phrases that catch her off guard. It takes her three tries to get through "The Man I Love" without crying. But there is nothing particularly significant in this, because she also cries through lunch, coffee and tea time.
"I’m very emotional," says Carter, "And I’m having an especially teary weekend. But even when I wake up in the middle of the night weeping I manage to get through the next day happy."
Carter doesn’t seem to understand what is upsetting her. But a little probing reveals deep anxieties about what the success of Filthy Rich would mean in her life. "I may be unprepared for it emotionally if it’s a big success," she admits.
Such inner turmoil is not new to Carter. "I have spurts of feeling very capable, or good at what I do, but then it goes away," she says with touching vulnerability.
Three years ago Carter moved with her daughters to California from New York (where she kept an apartment until later last year), after she was offered a role in the short-lived ABC series Out of the Blue. A year later she got the lead in a new sitcom, The Two of Us, costarring with British actor Peter Cook. As the show evolved, the producer decided that she was "too elegant" to be half of the duo. "When it came up," says Carter, "I would quickly say that I was tired. I wanted to bring it up before somebody else did."
Obviously, moving was hard on Carter. For a long time she was without friends and very much alone. All the same it was a transition she had to make. "I was a dilettante in New York," she says, "not really laying it on the line. But coming to California is definitely trying to have a career as an actress. There’s no going back."
Actually, going back to where Dixie Carter comes from would not be such a terrible ordeal. She was born and raised in McLemoresville, Tenn., population 400, (road signs erected last summer read: "Welcome to McLemoresville, Home of Dixie Carter"). Her parents owned several Tennessee department stores. She entered college to be a music major, but was graduated with a degree in English and in between was voted 1959 Miss Tennessee runner-up. At this point, confused about her future, she decided, after appearing briefly on the local stage, to try out for an acting career in New York. After two weeks in town, she landed a part in Joseph Papp’s production of The Winter’s Tale, followed by a Lincoln Center musical, met businessman-financier Arthur Carter, married him and retired.
"If I had had the confidence in myself then that I do now I probably wouldn’t have quit," she admits. "If I believed then that I was good -- that I was really good ... but underneath it all I just thought there was a good chance that I was a mediocre talent." During the Carters’ marriage Dixie spent most of her time "decorating" and "hostessing" in their Fifth Avenue apartment or their house on Long Island. And when they separated she spent a humiliating year looking for an agent who would take on a mother of two who hadn’t worked in seven years. Then came a stint as a regular on The Edge of Night, a small supporting role in a TV sitcom (On Our Own) taped in New York and a very short marriage to stage actor George Hearn.
The sun is shining again at 8 the next morning as Dixie Carter, in a gym near home, swings upside down from a trapeze. Exercise is the latest addition to her vast collection of character-building techniques -- from churchgoing to Rolfing to analysis. "I always though of myself as a coward," she says. Until about a year ago. It was then that Dixie and two friends from New Zealand set out along on two boar trips. One was a 300-mile sail from Pago Pago to the Tonga Islands and the other was a 1500-mile journey from Tonga to New Zealand. Putting her life on the line -- which is how she often felt -- was a way of standing up to her worst fears and conquering them. "Once you go and face whatever it is -- God -- in some kind of way, some ultimate test, then it’s different. You really are convinced somehow or other that you’re not afraid of death. On the boat I had a real strong look at what I believe in and what I’m frightened of and what I’m not."
Right now things seem to be well settled for Dixie Carter. She appears to know where she’s going. But for how long? "One week I’m planning a nightclub act [she’ll be at the Gardenia in L.A. next month], the next a move back to New York and a week after that I’m organizing a family get-together in Northern Spain. I just get an idea," says Dixie Carter, "and I’m off."
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