Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 19, 1994 TAG: 9402220003
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PATRICIA BRENNAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"It's hard enough to be the only new kid coming into a school, but not to have brothers and sisters to share it with! Maybe I'm fantasizing, but it would have been nice to have had somebody to commiserate with."
Home to Kurtz was Omaha, where she was born and where her maternal grandmother lived. "Whenever I dream about home, I dream of my grandmother's house," she said. "If I had any roots at all, it would be there."
She is a relative by marriage to Omaha financier Warren Buffett. "I once sent him a Warner Bros. cap, because it says WB on it," she recalled. "He loved it."
Kurtz has another home, an apartment on Central Park West in New York that she rarely visits these days. Her decade-long string of plays there has given way to her NBC series, "Sisters," completing its third season next month.
Each renewal has pleasantly surprised the four women around whom the show is built: Kurtz as eldest Reed sister Alex, Patricia Kalember as Georgie, Sela Ward as Teddy and Julianne Phillips as Frankie.
This season Alex, divorced from her plastic-surgeon husband (David Dukes) and now a breast-cancer survivor, found love with Big Al Barker (Robert Klein), "the prince of Pricetown (a discount store)." On Feb. 12 Alex married Big Al, just before the Internal Revenue Service arrested him for tax evasion.
"Sisters" takes a break until mid-April, pre-empted for an "I Witness Video" special, and then episodes of new "Winnetka Road." It comes back with what an NBC publicist called "a big surprise." Maybe more than one surprise. One of them is played by Jo Anderson. Another may involve Alex's daughter, played by Ashley Judd.
When Kurtz did the series pilot, which aired in May 1991, she didn't envision its staying power. "I thought it was too good for television," she said. "Then I thought, `Well, it'll be canceled immediately.' "
But viewers have always been able to find "Sisters" on Saturday nights. Its steadiness may be part of its success.
Kurtz said the show rates well among women from 18 to 49. "We're always in the top 10 for the entire week for that audience," she said. "All these other shows come along, and they're very trendy and they're the critics' darling and they get so much press, like `Twin Peaks' did. And then you look around and they're gone, and we're still here."
Fans can also find the series re-running weeknights on cable's Lifetime.
Kurtz appreciates a constant time slot. In 1981-82, she did "Love, Sidney" with Tony Randall, a show that NBC moved around until it finally died. Still, she received two Emmy nominations for the series.
A graduate of Hollywood High School, the University of Southern California and the London Academy of Dramatic Arts, Kurtz made her stage debut in Cincinnati in 1966.
Then she moved to New York and had a string of roles that took her through the 1970s, including "The Fifth of July" and "House of Blue Leaves," for which she won Tonys, and "Uncommon Women and Others," which won her an Obie.
Her films include "Slapshot," "The World According to Garp," "Dangerous Liaisons" and "Stanley and Iris." In "Reality Bites," released this weekend, she plays the mother of Winona Ryder.
The morning the Emmy nominations were announced, Kurtz found several messages on her answering machine, all warmly congratulatory. It wasn't until she had almost finished listening to them that she heard a friend say, "You got nominated for an Emmy for `Sisters.' "
She was surprised but pleased: The nomination was for best leading lady, on a series with four female leads.
After a lifetime of moving, first in a military family (she's named after her father's B-17 fighter, The Swoose, now at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.) and then as an actress, Kurtz recognizes that "Sisters" has given her stability.
"It's like a regular job, except it goes on many more hours. But it's a continuity I've never had in my life. It's a wonderful thing to see the same people every day, to work with the same people."
In mid-March "Sisters" completes shooting; then the cast waits to see if the show is picked up. If so, filming begins in July.
by CNB