Stefanie Powers doesn’t intend to lose Gary Lockwood’s love by remaining the girl he married. She thinks...It’s a SIN to Stay the Same.
"Why shouldn’t I change?" she asks with the logic he adores. "He’d start to hate me if I didn’t. He knows he can count on it."
Gary agrees anyone who picks a rut and hides in it is sadly suppressed.
“There’s no reason to choose a monotonous existence,” she points out with a dazzling smile. “Not really. You may ignore your possibilities, put them on ice for a while. Yet your hopes still persist, pop up again till you realize you actually can do something about them. Why wait? Experiment now! Plan and plunge and the result may be pure pleasure or if it’s a painful disappointment you’ll emerge wiser about how to get more out of life. From love.
“Each day is different in some way. Because I sense this, so am I!”
Sitting opposite Stefanie at a lunch table in the cafe at MGM is not a casual hour. She can express herself like that if she spots a genuine interest in how she functions as Gary’s wife. At first she has an instinctive feminine reserve. But, when she recognizes it’s safe to be trusting, her serious big brown eyes begin to sparkle and she’s delightfully frank.
“Gary feels just as I do about the danger in dull routines. They’re terrible traps! Habits are necessary; yes. But only half of them. Take the planned birthdays I was used to, for instance.”
Sentimental about them, as well as every sort of anniversary and traditional holiday, Stefanie will never forget her first birthday since her marriage six months ago.
“I worked all that day. When I got home, I took a shower. Gary was strangely silent when he came in. He flopped on the bed, saying only, I’m
(oh oh - I’m missing the next page! Sorry folks!)
added firmly. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
I predict she will. She’s as much of a gourmet as Gary, and he got a charge out of whipping up tasty dishes in bachelor days.
Their white, wood, one-story, three-bedroom house on a winding canyon in Beverly Hills has been in a constant state of alteration, and that doesn’t disturb them, since they’ll always be conscious of potentialities. Stefanie bought it a year before becoming a bride. Having always lived with her mother and brother in apartments, she decided proving she could manage safely on her own was a sensible step.
Even before their wedding Gary went into high gear with the carpentering at which he’s a cool cat. Brought up on a farm to be useful with his hands, he’d personally built onto his own Hollywood canyon cottage until he’d doubled it in size. Selling it at an impressive profit, he’d remodeled his hillside cabin on a choice peak above Malibu and they’re keeping it as their beach place. Now, with the Beverly abode as their California headquarters, one bedroom suite is for their housekeeper and the other has been transformed into a cozy, paneled den where he’s hung a huge picture of Humphrey Bogart behind the bar. Gary began at Warner’s when Bogie was at his peak in fame and still honors his acting and honesty.
After finishing in his own TV series, The Lieutenant, Gary decided to concentrate on movies. When he went to London for the six months it took to film 2001: Space Odyssey, MGM’s fantastic $7, 000, 000 Cinerama production, he rented the Sean Connerys’ flat on Bayswater and their housekeeper went with it. Stefanie finally visited England and brought back the housekeeper who wanted to remain with them.
“We’ve just bought two tuxedo sofas in black leather for our living-room here. We’re modern in most ways, but we don’t go for cold modernistic styling. I’ve a passion for graceful antique pieces in French Provincial.
“In London, Gary took a long lease on a flat in Hampstead. That’s our base there now. It’s in a neighborhood where the architecture is totally Victorian. There isn’t a market in miles! It’s all such a contrast to California that we’re stimulated by the change in atmosphere. We’re going to furnish the salon formally, with royal and powder blue as the predominating colors.
“We want to live in London for a while because it’s such an intriguing city. We want to buy a boat, a sail-boat with a motor we can handle ourselves. We’ll anchor it at St. Tropez and take off from the Riviera for adventures around Europe. We’d like to try living everywhere once!”
Their travel in the past has convinced them roots can wait.
“We have to earn our future,” Stefanie said in a practical tone. “Like everyone else, we want to deserve opportunities to show what we can accomplish. I feel so fortunate to be doing The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. It’s not only fun, but so different from all I’d done. I already preferred to dress in a ‘now’ mode, so the Mod things I wear every week are a direct reflection of my own taste. I believe in dressing for an effect, but not for shock.
“I’m not exhausted by the longer hours of work a series demands. I’d rather be too busy than waiting for a break.”
She has a new movie out, The Warning Shot with David Janssen, and it’ll further cinch her acting range because, again, she’s not just the same as on TV. What she’ll do during her coming hiatus from her television schedule is up in the air at the moment.
“It all depends on how worthwhile possible movies are. Gary and I will take off for London if we don’t commit ourselves for films this spring. Then we’ll go on to Rome.”
On the outskirts there she’ll introduce him to the twenty-seven Italian children she’s helping. When she found these abandoned young boys and girls (they age in range now from a year and a half to fourteen) she couldn’t resist offering to do everything within her power for them. She’s deeply concerned about her overseas brood.
“Three weeks after our wedding Gary was away for a month. He went to Finland to film a sports short about duck hunting but there were no ducks there. So they flew south to Yugoslavia. He stopped over in Germany to see his brother there. Dennis is studying and teaching piano in the village of Idar-Oberstein. That’s in the famous Black Forest.”
Gary couldn’t shave for several months for his role in his Warner movie Fury at Firecreek. He was determinedly characterizing with this beard. He has charm and guts and Stefanie didn’t complain because she knew he was doing it for his part. But she never could truly rave about kisses with whiskers.
“I’ll confess,” she sighed, “that in this respect I was glad when Gary was once more the same as usual!”
