FOR COLEMAN, IT'S THE END OF 'DYNASTY'
SYLVIA LAWLER, The Morning CallTHE MORNING CALL
Jack Coleman finally gets his wish to say goodbye forever to Krystle and Alexis, Sammy Jo and Fallon and the rest of the platinum-plated ilk that hangs around the Denver Carringtons. "Dynasty's" season finale on Wednesday night will mark the Easton-born actor's final appearance as Blake Carrington's (
John Forsythe) troubled, bisexual son Steven.
It's a role that has given Coleman national exposure of the People magazine, talk show and hunk-of-the-month variety, but -- the nature of soaps being what they are -- not a lot of room for creative expression in six years of playing Steven.
Coleman, whose background is in theater, has wanted to leave the mercurial nighttime melodrama since around the time Steven survived the Moldavian massacre two seasons ago. The decision, finally, to head in another career direction is his. (He tried quitting last year, but instead negotiated for one more season, the one just concluding. When the producers asked him to stay for the 1988-89 season, he made firm his decision).
A cryptic note left behind for Blake, not death by landslide, hurricane or kidnapping by aliens, will be the writer's peg explaining Coleman's absence from the show. Will his disappearance hint that Steven is going off to resume his former homosexual lifestyle?
"He has been sexually neutered for the last couple of seasons and will remain so," said Coleman's manager, John Zaring of Film Associates in Los Angeles. "Even Jack doesn't know what's going on or how he will leave. All anybody but the writers knows is he left a note for Blake and then disappears. We won't know until next season why."
Coleman has always said he didn't care if the writers pointed Steven down the straight or gay path, but that "I happen to be straight so I feel more comfortable playing that."
"The first two years of the series it wasn't a big deal because I was just so happy to be on the show. After a couple of years is when you start worrying about your image, and how you're being perceived, and I think at that point, I started hoping more and more that the storyline would go to a heterosexual one."
That started to happen, sort of ... but Steven's character really remained in a kind of sexual limbo even while he professed a quiet preference for the gay life. In an earlier interview, Coleman talked of growing more and more uncomfortable with what had become a kind of character-stagnation he felt all the acting ability in the world couldn't rise above. Reminded that John Forsythe had once commented that he (Coleman) possessed "a world of charm that he is never able to show," Coleman said:
"It's not so much the casting as the show itself. I, for better or worse, have a rather sharp tongue. I enjoy quips and offhand humor, and humor is something that's not a strong suit of 'Dynasty's' and it happens to be one of the things I do best. I think I can be funny, but Steven tends to be a fairly troubled character, as do most of the people on the show. There's not a whole lot of lightness," he understated. "But that's something that, in another role, I can get to display more."
It hit him one night, he said, waiting to go on a national talk show and listening in the green room as actor Klaus Maria Brandauer talked with the host about his own career.
"He had just finished doing 'Hamlet' on the Vienna stage, and was discussing that and 'Out of Africa,' for which he was nominated for an Oscar. I was to come out after him and I almost didn't want to go on," Coleman said. "To go from talking about 'Hamlet' and 'Out of Africa' and then ... "
Coleman distorted his voice into a Mickey Mouse squeak ... " 'And now, here comes Jack Coleman. Tell us, Jack, what is Alexis really like?' ... I happen to think I'm more interesting than that, but that's the situation I'm in."
But he did not want his frustration to be mistaken for ingratitude. Asked whether the word "trapped" was too strong to describe his feelings at the time he answered:
"Right. I'm not pulling for any sympathy here. I have an absolutely charmed life. But in terms of being interviewed, I just think that 10 years from now people are going to be much more interested in what I have to say about things."
Coleman's charmed life began in Easton where his parents -- his father is a retired Lafayette College history professor -- still live. The last of seven children, Coleman is a direct descendant of Benjamin Franklin and the grandson of 1934 Pulitzer Prize-winner Herbert Agar. A Duke University graduate, he was only 24 when he took over the role of Steven Carrington from Al Corley, the actor fired from the part during "Dynasty's" second season.
The series premiered in January, 1981. Coleman turned 30 this Feb. 21, so the greater part of his adult life has been spent with the Aaron Spelling production, which has roamed the ratings scale from riotous super-success to ho-hum mediocrity.
He is free now, to pursue his first love, the stage. He has done theater in Los Angeles and Off-Broadway, having performed in at least two plays during breaks in "Dynasty's" schedule over the years, and he is young, attractive and backgrounded enough to have the best part of a career ahead of him.
But acting is a precarious business, and even though Coleman says he knows "it's the right one for me," he is also aware -- as he told "Entertainment Tonight" when his departure was announced -- that many another actor has gone the McLean Stevenson route and faded from view after leaving a successful series to strike out on his own. (The very popular Stevenson left his role as Lt. Col. Henry Blake on "M*A*S*H" at its peak and never achieved comparable fame on his own, while the series itself continued and went out with a blaze of glory several years later. "Dynasty," however, may have already run its course on ABC; there are those who believe next season could be its last).
Coleman also knows it's strictly a myth that any but the most select group of actors can call their own shots. "There are about 10 people in the business who control their careers. Seriously, that's about what it comes down to." He chalked off "The DeNiros, the Jack Nicholsons, the Meryl Streeps, and then there's the rest of everybody else sort of floundering around for what's available."
He is considering a Broadway play, and coming up for sure is a theatrical movie with his manager's firm, Film Associates. It is an adult, Boston-set drama called "Winners' Out," and will costar
Denzel Washington, who is hot right now after "Cry Freedom." Coleman and Washington play two friends, basketball teammates at Harvard -- Coleman is mad about basketball -- who meet later in life on a professional level and fall in love with the same woman.
The idea for the story -- its theme being the fine line between using and abusing friendship -- came from Coleman, his manager John Zaring who is a Wyomissing native, and another friend, writer Peter Doyle, whose family's business built the Coleman family's summer home in New England, and who will do the screenplay. The continuing writer's strike could push the project into next spring from what had been planned as a fall start, pointing up once more that in Coleman's business, there are no sure things.
But this is something Coleman had to do for himself, and with his healthy attitude toward reality, it's not likely he'll harbor any regrets.
Once, he admitted that it hurt to see some of Hollywood's less talented lights get ahead in a business where many craftsmen weren't working. "Yeah, it does. It does," he repeated. "But I think it all comes out in the wash eventually and I don't begrudge anybody anything because I've been lucky myself."