FARRAH, LONI AND FRIENDS HOOK

VIEWERS WITH THIS SEASON'S HIT CONCEPT:

I PLAYED A TV PROSTITUTE

Tube

The Red Light Sting demonstrated that Farrah can still lure an audience. The movie, which marked Fawcett's
first TV role in three years, was the fourth highest-rated show of the week.

^ \ s k e d to use the word "horticulture"
in a sentence, the caustic critic and
Algonquin wit Dorothy Parker replied,
"You can lead a whore to culture, but
you can't make her think." Judging
from the current trend, the same might
well be said of network executives.
During the past season, the networks
took a passionate new interest in the
world's oldest profession. Besides
populating such miniseries as The Last
Days of Pompeii with ladies of the eve-
ning, the networks aired at least half a
dozen TV movies featuring prosti-
tutes as heroines. Farrah Fawcett,
Loni Anderson and Ann Jillian were
among those who played strumpets.
Even Debby Boone lit up her career
with a piece of the action—to viewers'
satisfaction. "You can never underes-
timate the horniness of the American
public," observes Lou Rudolph, a Hol-
lywood producer and former head of
ABC's TV-movie division.
If ratings are any indication, Rudolph
is right. Placing in the top 10 of their re-
spective weeks were CBS' The Red
Light Sting, in which Farrah Fawcett
played a madam aiding a law-enforce-
ment sting, and ABC's Sins of the Past,
which saw Barbara Carrera, Kim Cat-
trail and Boone as ex-hookers facing
blackmail. NBC paraded Ann Jillian as a
B-girl in a Japanese bar in Girls of the
White Orchid, and Sessions turned Hill
Street's Veronica Hamel into a fille de
joie. Such sagas even outperformed
some high-powered theatricals on the
networks. In one surprising upset,
ABC's My Mother's Secret Life, starring
Loni Anderson, beat out Chariots of Fire
and almost equaled On Golden Pond's
audience. The only floozy film to fizzle
was CBS' An Uncommon Love, in which
marine biology student Kathryn Harrold
moonlighted as a massage parlor at-
tendant. Last week CBS went back to
its vaults for a repeat of The Two Lives
of Carol Letner, a 1981 TV movie star-
ring Meredith Baxter Birney as a call girl
turned coed. "It was a turkey," moans
Birney. "They must be desperate."
Or imaginative. As pay TV and home
video siphon off the network audience
for overexposed movies, the net-
works are producing more TV movies
with exploitable subjects. Next season
promises more of the same. NBC has
Trick Eyes, in which William Shatner is
obsessed by Cybill Shepherd's street-
walker, and His Mistress, with Robert
Urich and Julianne Phillips in roles that
resemble the late Alfred Bloomingdale

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" T h e y don't usually come my way," says Mer-
edith Baxter Birney of such roles. "They want In The Last Days of Pompeii, Lesley-Anne Down (with Brian Blessed and Malcolm Jamieson, cen-
someone more sultry." ter) played a prostitute named Chloe. The actress is now a proponent of legalized prostitution.

Cybill S h e p h e r d de-
clared, "I don't believe
in arresting the wom-
an unless they arrest
the customer too."

H e r r e s e a r c h taught Kathryn Harrold why hookers prefer working

in massage parlors. "You're not paying a pimp, you've got a place to
go, and you can say no to a customer," she says.
 EE
B e f o r e she found and Vicki Morgan. An equal opportuni-
out which bitch was ty network, CBS has signed Angie
her mother, Phoebe
Dickinson to play a politician who dal-
Cates spent a brief
time as a demimon- lies with a male hustler.
daine in Lace. For actresses playing such parts,
the work has rewards. First, it's a job.
Second, the roles offer both a chal-
lenge and a chance for acclaim. Jill
Clayburgh got a big boost from the
1975 ABC movie Hustling. "I wanted to
play someone down and dirty," adds
Kathryn Harrold. "I was tired of going
around in suits and carrying a brief-
case." Even Farrah favored the
change of pace. When The Red Light
Sting aired, she observed, "My charac-
ter, Kathy Dunne, is a stronger, tough-
er woman than I have ever played on
TV. How soft can you be when you
work in a brothel?"
Researching the role is not so re-
warding; most found it acutely depress-
ing. Linda Purl, who was in Little Ladies
of the Night and The Last Days of Pom-
peii as a slave girl (she was bought by a
madam but refused to join the ranks),
spent several evenings talking with
teenage prostitutes. "They were all
young girls who said it was a temporary
thing. What they really wanted to do was
get into movies," says Purl. Shepherd
drove around with the L.A. vice squad
and had herself locked up in a cell. After
finishing the film, "It took me weeks to
Loni A n d e r s o n ' s conservative clothes didn't V e r o n i c a Hamel's classy call girl, despite vis-
keep her long lost daughter (Amanda Wyss) from
recover," she says. Over drinks, Harrold
its to a shrink, has a nervous breakdown in front
guessing about My Mother's Secret Life. of a chic New York store in Sessions. quizzed two massage parlor attendants
about their lives and then accompanied
them to work. "It was no different than
hanging around the beauty parlor," she
says. "Everybody sits around reading
magazines, filing their nails and gossip-
ing. Once in a while a girl goes off
with a customer and you hear the mas-
sage tables squeaking."
The networks aren't eager to dis-
cuss this proliferation. The party line is
that the movies are not exercises in
sleaze; instead, they have redeeming
value, since all show the women get-
ting out of the business or meeting hor-
rible fates for staying in it.
Kirstie Alley, who was in Sins of the
Past, doesn't buy this upward-and-up-
lift stance. "The reality is that a woman
is selling her body and that is a very
sick and very degrading thing," she
says. For Alley, a close encounter
brought home the point that audiences
were missing. The day after the airing
of her TV movie, a checkout clerk at
her neighborhood grocery store told
Barbara C a r r e r a (left) was the former best little madam in New York, and Kristen Meadows,
her, "I saw you on TV. I loved your
Debby Boone and Tracy Reed were among her ex-colleagues in Sins of the Past. clothes." LEAHROZEN

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