Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 9, 1990 TAG: 9004080006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TRACIE FELLERS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But the veteran actress, who started her acting career after winning the Miss America Pageant in 1955, says performing on stage is her first love.
Since her "Barnaby Jones" days, Meriwether has spent a lot of time on stage - much of it through her affiliation with Theater West, a Los Angeles-based actors' workshop.
This week, Meriwether will take the stage in Radford University's production of "Picnic." The play opens tonight at Porterfield Theatre.
"Picnic," written by William Inge, is the story of a widow's difficulties in bringing up two teen-age daughters in a Midwestern town.
The play won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1953. The film version, released in 1955, starred William Holden, Kim Novak and Cliff Robertson.
At a slim and stunning 54, Meriwether's blue eyes, sleek brown hair and effervescence belie her age. She plays Rosemary in "Picnic," which she calls "a wonderful slice of Americana." The character is "an old-maid schoolteacher - my first honest-to-goodness character role," Meriwether said in an interview in Radford on Friday.
"I'm playing close to my own age and close to where I would like to be headed in my career. I would love to play character roles on television. Drunks, derelicts, old-maid schoolteachers, dowdy dumpy housewives, dowdy dumpy secretaries - those are the fun roles. I'm not usually cast that way," she said.
For the past two years, she's played Lily Munster on MCA TV's "The Munsters Today." In the Roanoke area, the nationally syndicated comedy series can be seen on WVTF (Channel 27) Saturdays at 5:30 p.m.
"We start rehearsal on our third year on Monday, the day after I leave" Radford, she said. The show is taped in Los Angeles, where she and her husband, actor Marshall Borden, live.
Meriwether says "The Munsters Today" is the closest she's come to combining what she likes best about television and stage work. Its production schedule allows more rehearsal than many TV shows permit. And it's taped in front of a live audience.
More rehearsal time is one reason Meriwether generally prefers stage to screen. "I love being able to rehearse, which you seldom get a chance to do anytime in television," she said.
Another advantage is performing in front of a different audience every night. "You get immediate reaction. It's an entity. It's a body that's alive and palpable.
"You hear them, you feel them, you sense them. It's all a part of the mixture of the performance, the play."
For Meriwether, television's strong suit is its variety. In "Barnaby Jones," which ran on CBS from 1973 to 1980, "I played the same character for eight years, but each week, there was a different story line."
Meriwether played Betty, the daughter-in-law and aide to detective Barnaby Jones, played by Buddy Ebsen.
Working with Ebsen was "the best," she added. "I met him and knew immediately that we would have a wonderful rapport, on screen and off. He's just incredible. The energy of the man - he could make a fortune if he bottled it."
Meriwether, who also has had a successful career in films, said she's been lucky in her professional relationships with fellow actors, including Rock Hudson, Andy Griffith and John Wayne. "I hear horror stories from actors who have worked with other people. Time after time after time, I've had good luck."
Perhaps the most challenging role of her career thus far was that of Catwoman in the first film version of "Batman," released in 1966 and based on the popular TV series of that time. The film starred Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin, and Burgess Meredith and Cesar Romero as the Penguin and the Joker.
Julie Newmar, who had played Catwoman in the "Batman" TV series, was unable to be in the movie. Meriwether said she got the part by doing her "impression of a female feline. I did all the things my cat did over the years - I purred and I licked my hand." They cast her virtually on the spot.
"I . . . was thrown in the costume and thrown on the set. It was so fast, and no time to prepare, and acting by the seat of my pants - which I couldn't sit down in," she said, referring to her costume. "Those pants were tight. I mean tight."
The Catwoman costume was fashioned of "early Lycra with these metallic threads. They say it's tighter than your skin - well, your skin you can sit down in."
by CNB