Kelly Rutherford loves old movies.
"Every once in a while, I need to have my fix," says the 25-year-old former
model. "I think it's mainly when I need inspiration I look at the old pictures. I
don't find it as much in the new stuff. I love Carole Lombard. I think she's wonderful.
Gloria Grahame was really great. Garbo. Dietrich. People knew how to create an illusion.
Now everything is very realistic and straightforward. Everyone's grunge."
But not the blond Rutherford. In fact, there's something very retro about the actress. And
Hollywood has picked on that style. For two seasons, she was all Lauren Bacall allure as
bartender Judy Owens on ABC's "Homefront." This season, she's a sassy
combination of Marlene Dietrich and Mae West as saloon singer Dixie Cousins on Fox's
Western-comedy "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr."
"She's definitely a cross between Marlene Dietrich and Lauren Bacall," offers
Bruce Campbell, who plays Dixie's flame, Brisco County. "I saw a head shot of her
that was done in the 1940s' style and she easily could have been a studio starlet under
contract for Warner Bros. And she kind of is."
The series' executive producer and creator Carlton Cuse agrees with Campbell.
"'Homefront,' in a way, was an ideal showcase for that, because she really does seem
like a movie star out of another era," he says. "She has that grace and
old-fashioned kind of dignity about herself that very much reminds me of Bette Davis, with
a certain kind of spiciness of Mae West."
When she landed the recurring role of Dixie, Rutherford watched numerous Dietrich and West
flicks. "You know who I really loved was Madeline Kahn in 'Blazing Saddles,'"
says Rutherford over breakfast at the Kings Road Cafe in West Hollywood.
"She was a huge inspiration. She really helped me get this off-the-cuff thing which I
think is part of Dixie. I think there are so few characters written now, who you can just
play up. 'Homefront' was the same thing for me. It was set in the '40s and you can get
away being Lauren Becall."
Rutherford made seven episodes of "Brisco" this season- her last one airs April
22- while simultaneously filming the Touchstone Pictures summer release "I Love
Trouble." This time around, Rutherford plays a contemporary woman- a lab technician
who Chicago newspaper reporters Nick Nolte and Julia Roberts befriend to obtain
information.
"One week I'm a modern woman seducing Nick Nolte and the next moment I'm in the late
1800s seducing Bruce Campbell," sighs Rutherford, who will also appear in
"Cyclops, Baby...," a short film for Buena Vista Pictures.
Rutherford says she wasn't nervous reading for her part with Nolte. "I always look at
those things as fun," Rutherford says. "Here's an actor whom I admire, who is
obviously one of the sexiest men alive, and the history you have going in reading with
someone like that. My audition wasn't difficult. I was just reacting to him." She
erupts into laughter. "It's a tough job."
Rutherford, who grew up in New York and Los Angeles, left home at
17 to study acting in New York. "I don't know what quite got me into acting,"
she says. "I always loved movies. My mom brought me to movies as a kid."
To make ends meet in New York, she did commercials and modeled. "I preferred doing
commercials," says Rutherford. "I loved modeling, but it wasn't my
personality."
She got her big break doing a small scene on the ABC daytime drama "Loving,"
opposite a pre-"Beverly Hills, 90210" Luke Perry. Eventually, Rutherford left
New York and moved back to Los Angeles.
After making the rounds for a year, Rutherford got a regular gig on the short lived NBC
daytime drama "Generations." Guest shots on such sitcoms as "Teech"
and "Davis Rules" followed before she landed on "Homefront."
If "Brisco," whose ratings have been low, returns for a second season, Cuse
would love Rutherford to be a regular on the series. Dixie, Cuse says, has changed
dramatically since the pilot.
"The original idea was to make Brisco more of a womanizer, where the guy has a
different girl every episode. Maybe it was a pull of the times, in combination with
Kelly's extraordinary talent, which led us to kind of change that. We decided to keep
Brisco a one-woman man."
Just as Dietrich, Garbo, and Bacall are Rutherford's role models, the actress has
discovered she's become an idol in her own right. "I get letters from little girls
saying they want to be just like Dixie," Rutherford says, laughing. "They send
me pictures of themselves dressing up like Dixie. I'm so worried what future generations
will be like!"
