Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 8, 1994 TAG: 9402080148
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kathleen Wilson
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
There was the guy whose friend's father lived in Connecticut and was Harlem Globetrotter Meadowlark Lemon's plumber.
Then there's Dorothy Turner-Holcomb, who related her 1960s Hollywood escapades with Barbara Eden, Sally Field and Elizabeth Montgomery - to name but a few.
Dot - you can call her that; Jeannie, Sister Bertrille and Samantha did - was born and raised in Roanoke and lives here today. She was living in Miami when she decided "it was time to change states."
In 1967, she'd read in a newspaper that Caesar's Palace was about to have its grand opening in Las Vegas . . . Nevada seemed as good a state as any.
Before Dot hopped into her un-air-conditioned Volkswagen Bug for the cross-country trip, she fired off a letter to the powers-that-be at Caesar's Palace.
"Please don't do a thing until I get there!" she wrote. "I'm on my way."
Impetuous, you say? Capricious? What about just plain hare-brained?
You're wrong.
For anyone hoping to work for those whose names dot Hollywood Boulevard, Dot's scheme was brilliant.
She arrived in Las Vegas the day after the grand opening. When she introduced herself to Caesar's personnel manager, the woman somewhat sarcastically said, "So you're Dorothy. I'm sure you understand there were just some things we had to do without you."
Dot was offered a job in sales.
Which she decided not to take before she fled Las Vegas for Los Angeles the very next day, leaving a "thanks, but no thanks" note at Caesar's.
"It was 118 degrees!" explains Dot. "I knew I just couldn't live anywhere THAT hot."
It didn't get much cooler in Los Angeles, where she arrived soaking wet from a combination of perspiration and having sat on a bag of ice in the car.
Dot found a motel room right across the street from Columbia Pictures. "I figured I might as well let them know I was in town."
So she walked over the guard and asked the guard if she could see personnel.
"Nobody but God sees personnel," she was told. But the guard took her resume.
The next morning Columbia called and asked if she might be interested in a temporary publicist's job with Screen Gems, Columbia's television subsidiary.
Dot managed to parlay a monthlong assignment into 14 months.
"I've always seemed to travel with serendipity," admits Dot, who today is nearly 70.
Dot was responsible for tape-recording sitcom stars' voices for on-air promotion.
Here's the 411 - that's Arsenio-ese for information - straight from Dot about our '60s television icons:
"Bewitched" star Elizabeth Montgomery "was so business-like. I always appreciated her greatly. I usually had to wait on the set for quite a while until they had time for me.
"But she was a true professional. She'd take a look at the dialogue, promise to be back in 15 minutes to tape it and was never even a minute late."
"Bewitched" mother-in-law-from-hell Agnes Moorehead. "Now she was a doozie! She was a marvelous actress, but every time I'd go to her she'd moan, `Oh, Dot! I'm just stretched so thin. I'm just overdoing it! I don't have time!'
"She wanted to be begged, but I was always so intimidated and wouldn't nag. She didn't quite know how to handle that, so she usually wound up doing what I wanted."
"I Dream of Jeannie" star Barbara Eden "was such a sweet, beautiful person. I was once in her dressing room when they were fitting her with those bras she wore on the show, and the only other thing she was wearing were bikini underpants.
"They took such care to cover her belly button with those harem pants, but I can say I've seen her belly button. I've seen it all."
"I Dream of Jeannie" astronaut Larry Hagman "was described to me by other publicists as a real terror. I drew Larry for my very first assignment, and wouldn't you know it, the tape recorder wouldn't work.
" `Why me?' I was asking myself. I thought for sure he was going to throw a fit. But he said, `Let me take a look at that, Dot. I'm good at things like this.' He turned out to be a really good buddy."
"The Flying Nun" star Sally Field. "Sally couldn't read! She was a wonderful little actress and so cute, but she could not read cold copy. She had an awful time. She'd mispronounce words and couldn't even really read her script.
"She had a great memory - she had to, because she couldn't read cue cards. She would get so embarrassed, and once I saw a director look at her and yell, `Now wasn't that just terrible.'
"Of course now she's winning Academy Awards, and who knows who that director was . . . "
"The Monkees," Mike Nesmith, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones, "were just four little wild kids. They were nice and well-mannered on the set. But I never did go on tour with them, and I don't know how you could blame the boys for all the craziness of the girls screaming and throwing themselves at them.
"Now, Mike Nesmith was the only one married at the time, but he had a girlfriend, too. And she used to call me all the time making up any excuse she could to get on the set."
And, yes, Davy Jones was "so cute, so adorable."
Dot didn't much care for Macdonald Carey, the man who plays the oh-so-lovable patriarch Dr. Tom Horton on "Days of Our Lives"
"Nothing you every did for him was right. He'd go right into a tizzy."
Nor did Dot find Jacqueline Bouvier anyone worth knowing when the two worked at the now-defunct Washington Times-Herald in Dot's pre-Hollywood days (and Jackie's pre-Kennedy days).
"I was no friend of hers. She was very aloof. All we knew was that she came from a very wealthy family and really didn't have to work."
Then Dot delivered the final blow to Jackie-O. The blow that strikes her right off of my list of people I hope to run into.
"Jackie didn't associate with us," reveals Dot.
"Jackie just did not mingle."
by CNB