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Show STAR PROFILE/By Peer J. Oppenheimer Candice Bergen: “I Don't Know WhyPeople Like Me’ If she’s not the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, Candice Bergencertainlyis one of the most beautiful women. More- “Acting to her is pure nonsense. She mocks a picture. She criticizes everything. Her knowledge of people is disastrous.” This is how people used to sum up Edgar Bergen’s beautiful daughter. Does this assessmentstill hold true? over, at 25, Candice—whoalso answers to Candy, Bergen, Bergie or Slim—has had ample opportunity in film: she's played opposite Ellictt Gould in “Getting Straight” and Jack Nicholson in “Carnal Knowledge,” and now she has the title role in “T, R. Baskin” opposite Peter Boyle, one of moviedom’s hottest names Wewantto give every unmarried teenager, every young married, every parent, a FREE. 48 PAGE ILLUSTRATED booklet that reveals the excitement, the loveliness, the RIGHTNESSof SEX. Send TODAYfor this sound, workable and delightful approach to SEX. Find out how SEX, which is a problem to many can becomeoneof life's blessings and fulfillments. WHY NOT FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF? | | | : LUTHERAN LAYMEN’S LEAGUE Dept 9 2185 Hampton Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63139 Please senda copyof the booklet “SEX AND THE SILENT REVOLUTION” | 21P cove pte Cece pee reterae tee We're the people who broadcast The Lutheran Hour..each Sunday. Wider publication of the above message made possible through the fraternal benevolence program of Association for Lutherans, since his success in “Joe.” Yetfor mostofthe six years she has been in films, Candy has been biting the hand that feeds her. Five years ago, before I met Candy, one of her coworkers told me, “Candy is complex but totally immature. Herattitude is negative. Acting, to her, is pure nonsense. She mocks a picture. She criticizes everything. Her knowledge of peopleis disastrous. Unless sheis immediately stimulated, she ignores people.” When I met Candy a few weeks later at her parents’ house in Beverly Hills, I realized that this assessment was not entirely wrong. She was beautiful, but awkward and impatient. She herself admitted she was unable to get along with people. What made her this way, and has she changed in the passing years? Candy comes from show-business aristocracy. Her father is ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, her mother the beautiful Frances Bergen (one of Hollywood's best-liked hostesses’, and her godfather was the late Walt Disney. Candy grew upin luxury. She was denied nothing that she wanied, except the attention showered on her Angeles, when she sat one row in front of me and spent a good part of the 12 hours flight time smooching with Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher. Her other involve- < wd pretty hard to turn out normal, people don’t treat you as but as sort of a superhuman person.” Whypeoplelike her is her true beauty. WhenCendyis on the screen,it is difficult to concentrate on anyone else, and that has been both an asset anda liability. But at 25, she’s fully aware that she must work harderto stay where sheis. At last, Candy is becoming serious about her work. She has taken the unprecedented step,atleast for her, of working forscalein a film forthe sheer pleasure of doingit. “WhenI read ‘T. R. Baskin,’ I knew righi away I liked it. It made me laugh.It is touching and very gentle. I'm “brother,” Charlie McCarthy. Sherecalls, tired of being in films that capitalize on “People cameto the house who were more interested in Charlie than in me.” Hers was a peculiar kind of growing up: “Half of me was very sophisticated,” Candytold me, “the other half was superficial.” Beverly Hills, with its plush pedicured gardens, swimming pools and RollsRoyces, seemed to her a non-place. So she went to college in Pennsylvania to be on her awn. “My ambitions were to sex and gore.” In “T. R. Baskin”she plays a small-town Ohio girl who comes to Chicagoto broaden her horizons and ends up lowering her expectations, “Nobody I be a writer and a photographer,”she said. (As a photographer,at least, she has done some fine work.) Then she turned to acting. Here, however, she has somehow failed to excel. There is no great progres- sion in the quality of her performances from a somewhat wooden portrayal! as Lakey in “The Group”to a not quite convincing portrayal of the college girl in “Carnal Knowledge.” Candy herself is disarmingly honest about both herattitude and, at least up to talked to believed I could play girl like that. I was so happy whenI gotthe part. And I didn’t do it for the money;if it doesn’t do well, I stand to make absolutely nothing from it. But I thought the time had come to make a decision and that ‘T. R. Baskin’ would be the movie to which I could really commit myself.” Candy could relate to the character because, she says, “It is about everybody's inability to have long-lastingrelationships. People are imprisoning themselves behind walls which they can’t take down when they wantto. I find thattrue of myself. I have set up so many defenses that now when i would like to take them down, it’s “They (the films) backfired consistently with disaster after disaster,” she says, very tough for me to remove them.” In herprivate life, Candy seems to have remained somewhatdistrustful anddistant in herrelationships with men. By a coincidence, I know of one occasion when “After looking at myfilms, I don’t quite she didn't act guarded in Public, and know whypeople like me.” that was on a flight from London to Los now, her qualifications as an actress. Family Weekly, October 10,1971 ments have ranged from actor-turnedstockbroker, Peter Mann,to a reactionary German Count with whom she went pheasant shooting in Spain. Jack Nicholson has been her most recentsteady. She has been mortified by some of her movie love scenes. “To be mauled all day by someone youdon't have a lot of chem- istry with is really tough, I meanit’s really awful.” So far, she has refused to bare herself in front of the cameras, although she has simulated nudity—with the camera alwayscutting short of exposingall ofher. Candy has attacked “open nudity” as “all those garbage films that are coming out now”andsaid that she would demand contractual guarantees against insertion of scenes with someone else doubling for her in nude sequences without her know!edge, This cameas a result of a scene in “The Magus,” in which an unclad double, purported to be her, was inserted without her consent, “I was really burned badly.” Candy is slowly but sureiy becoming less self-centered, taking a greaterinterest in what's happening around her, watching whatshe does and what she says. In many ways, Candy is no different from most actors and most people. Criticism jars all of us. Says Candy,“It's pretty hard to turn out normal when people don’t treat you as normal, butas sort of a superhuman person, when they are always Siring and Madam-ing you.”It’s a sign of maturity that she has become awarethat she cannot be loved by everyone. As @ result, she has changed. “I think I'm nicer thanI used to be,” she says. Oneof her coworkers on “T. R. Baskin” confirmed her judgment. “Frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to working with her. I'd heard all about how snobbish and difficult she is. But, she was a doll! She really gave her best, both as a person and as an actress!” Whatnext? Well, if Candy Bergen can be one of the rare women who combine true beauty with dedication and talent, she mayyet become another Ingrid Berg- man. o |