For All My Children's Jennifer Bassey, It's A Wonderful ... Er, Darling ... Life by Adam Kelley
Just The Facts Birthday: July 22
Real First Name: Joan ("But I didn't like it")
Pets: One 19-year-old cat, Clark ("as in Gable")
Film Appearances Include: Bonfire of the Vanities and Dunston Checks In Be Prepared: "I always wear makeup, just in case I run into someone who hates me."
What She Dreams About: Turkey burgers "Darling," Jennifer Bassey whispers seductively, "I was the meanest bunny in the hutch." And while she could be speaking metaphorically about her initial run as Liza's dearest Mommie on AMC, Bassey is actually recalling her introduction to show biz as a Bunny at the first Playboy Club in her hometown, Chicago. "We ran a room called the Penthouse Room, where all the stars played," says the actress. She wore her tail for two years, then decided to fly to London and audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts on the advice of Bobby Short, one of the club's regular acts. On the eve of her departure, all the Bunnies came over to help her pack; everybody got raging drunk and when Bassey opened her suitcase on the other side of the Atlantic, it was stuffed with feather boas, negligees, and evening gowns. "I had one sweater and one pair of pants," she grimaces, "and England is no cold, you could kill yourself." Bassey was accepted into the prestigious program (:"I got the lowest entrance marks in the history of the school") and was able to pay for it with assistance from a philanthropist she had met at the Playboy Club, who said he wanted to help her. "I thought, 'I'm sure you do, darling. You'd like to see me without my tail, too.' But then I met him in Brussels and he had just met a girl he was madly in love with, and I thought, 'Thank God -- he really is a philanthropist.'" Despite her poor entrance marks and "the worst audition they'd ever seen," Bassey wound up graduating with honors, finishing just below classmate and future Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins; her profs found that, though she was in her early 20s, she had a gift for playing old people. "I played every old woman you can think of," she sighs. "When I came to America and got my first Off-Broadway show, I was playing a 20-year-old and I started putting age lines on my face because I didn't know any other way to do makeup." Bassey did seven Broadway shows, bought a farm in Maryland with her then-husband ("We met at a funeral; I should've known it was an omen") and started doing soaps: Love of Life (as an Australian psychiatrist), Somerset (working with a flatulent dog), The Edge of Night. "Then, I made a fortune in voiceovers, and then," she says brightly, "I got All My Children in 1983." Fourteen years later, Bassey still relishes Marian's serio-comic interference in Liza's life. "We just have the best time," says the actress, who remains particularly fond of her patented Marian Colby Sex Pause. "That's what w call it," Bassey explains. "Marian thinks from the waist down. Everything is sexual to her, and the pauses convey that. So everything's like, 'Would you like a bite of my ... hamburger?'" Though she cops to a certain flamboyance, Bassey maintains that for the most part, she's nothing like Marian. "People think I'm a nymphomaniac," she sighs. "They meet me and expect me to say, 'Would you like to se my ... etchings?' It's bizarre. People make passes at me all the time. Then they say that I'm not like my character, and I say, 'No, I'm not, darling.'" Which is good news for her steady, Tony-winning Broadway impresario Luther Davis. She met him in the '70s, when she invested in a Broadway show -- "a black version of Kismet with Eartha Kitt and Melba Moore" called Timbuktu. "All us backers went to a preview, and Melba Moore was terrible. So we all wrote to Luther, who was directing it, demanding that he fire her. Then, on opening night, I walked into the theater to get my tickets and this man said, 'You're the girl who doesn't sign her letters. I'm Luther Davis.' I'd written my letter, but forgotten to sign it." "So I looked at this gorgeous man in forest green cashmere, and I started to talk gibberish: 'I was doing my yoga ... my goddaughter ... why don't we have lunch?' He said 'Fine.' And then I called my friend and said, 'Adele, I just met Luther Davis. He's not black. I don't know if he's married. I don't know if he's gay. I do know we'll be together for the rest of our lives." Adele scoffed, but Bassey was right. Next March 20 marks their 20th anniversary, though technically, they're not married. "What's the point?" Bassey asks. Davis has children; Bassey herself has remained blissfully kid-free. "It just wasn't in the upstairs plan, darling," she says. "Besides, the thought of a watermelon falling out of my crotch doesn't thrill me. My threshold for pain is nil." That said, Bassey gladly -- gleefully, even -- flew to Mexico City for a facelift a few years back. "This was right after the Berlin Wall came down," she recalls. "We were there. And Communist lighting is terrible. I looked terrible, so I called the doctor and he had a cancellation three days later, so I just went and did it." She's never looked back. "We live in an era where you can look fabulous until you die," she says. "I'm all for it. I know people who've had their ass lifted, their boobs cut down, their stomachs removed, their chins liposuctioned. Why not?" Not that she's always felt that way. "When you're in your 30s, you say, 'I won't have a facelift.' When you're in your 50s ... I said, 'I don't care if I die on the table, darling.'" Which brings us to that one word, seven letters, Bassey's signature term of endearment. "Wherever I go, people call me 'Darling,'" she laughs. "At work, when they're calling us to the set, they go, 'Erica, Liza, Adam and Darling.'" She pauses to reflect on the ad-libbing that earned her the nickname. "Occasionally, they'll tell me, 'Jennifer, you said 'darling' 24 times in the first two scenes -- can you cut some?' And I say, 'Of course I can, darling.'"
In Bed With Marian Fans still tell Bassey that their favorite AMC storyline is Marian's seduction of Tad, back in 1983. "It was fabulous," the actress recalls. "I was sleeping with a 17-year-old and buying him lovely presents. And Michael Knight (Tad) still says his favorite sex scenes were the ones with me because we choreographed them. We had a ball. I would say, 'I'm going to twirl your chest hair and take a Sex Pause' and he thought it was great. We had such fun. I would love to go back to Tad, but of course, I'm far too old for him now."