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Thursday, January 2, 1992 Section: EVERYDAY MAGAZINE
WENDY PHILLIPS FINDS JOB ON 'HOMEFRONT'
By Jerry Buck Of the Associated Press
WHEN Wendy Phillips played the widowed mother of three in the pilot for ABC's ''Homefront,'' she worried that her role would have no chance to evolve when it became a series.
''After my son came home from the war in the pilot, I had no dilemma,'' she says. ''Acting is active. It's problem solving.''
Not to worry. As ''Homefront'' settled in on Tuesday night's schedule (9 p.m. on Channel 2), Phillips' character developed ''a full wagon of problems,'' she says.
Phillips plays a staunch Catholic widow who suddenly finds herself romantically involved with a Jewish labor organizer in the nighttime soap opera set at the end of World War II. That's enough to keep things buzzing in the small, conservative, one-industry town in Ohio.
''I thought Anne Metcalf was the most undeveloped character in the pilot script,'' said Phillips, who auditioned for the role during her lunch hour while filming the current movie ''Bugsy.'' She previously starred in the series ''A Year in the Life'' and ''Falcon Crest.''
''I didn't have a real attraction. I didn't know who she was. So we talked about what they had in mind for this woman. They said she would have a love interest. I think I was attracted more by Lynn Marie Latham, one of the creators, than the character. I felt comfortable with her.''
Latham and her husband, Bernard Lechowick, are the series' creators and co-executive producers with David Jacobs. The producers also worked together on ''Knots Landing.''
Phillips says that while working on ''Bugsy,'' she met Latham at a party. ''It was a wonderful conversation. I couldn't believe she was a producer. It was more like we were girlfriends.''
During her first reading for ''Homefront,'' she was in her makeup and costume as Esta Siegel, the wife of the mobster played by Warren Beatty.
''I was in 1945 period dress down to my underwear,'' she said. ''I could only read during my lunch hour. They said it was distracting and asked me not to dress like that when I came back. They were from the same period, but Esta Siegel was rich a nd upper class and Anne Metcalf is working class.''
''Homefront'' follows three families: the working-class Metcalfs; the Sloans, owners of the town industry; and the Davises, a black family. Each family has its own story, but their lives frequently cross.
''Anne is a woman who has been a widow for five years,'' Phillips said. ''I don't think her children are fully aware of her attraction to Al Kahn, the labor organizer. She's a woman whose whole life has been kept together by her religion, her faith and her adherence to the dogmas of the church.''
Phillips was born into an acting family in Brooklyn. In 1952 she was forced to live with her grandmother in Atlanta for two years when her father could no longer find work after his McCarthy-era blacklisting.
Her father, Wendell K. Phillips, who recently died at the age of 83, had been a member of the Communist Party in the 1930s. He worked mostly in the New York theater.
He created the role of Cardinal Woolsey in ''Anne of a Thousand Days'' and won an award as best supporting actor for ''Abe Lincoln in Illinois.''
But in the anti-communist atmosphere of the early 1950s he couldn't buy a stage role. He finally returned to work for George S. Kaufman in ''The Solid Gold Cadillac.''
''He explained to me that he joined the Communist Party because the other artists he wanted to hang out with were members,'' Phillips said. ''He had no convictions about it. Twenty years later when he was blacklisted he didn't have any commitment to cling to.''
Her mother, Jean Shelton, runs an acting school in San Francisco.
It was her mother who introduced her to her husband, actor Scott Paulin, who is in the NBC series ''I'll Fly Away.'' They have an 8-year-old daughter.
''Scott was dating one of her acting students,'' she said. ''Mother introduced us and I met him in a local watering spot. I thought he was so arrogant. I knew he was the man for me.
''But I didn't see him again for a long time. Then I ran into him here in my agent's office. It turned out we had the same agent.''
The two played husband and wife in ''A Year in the Life.''
When their daughter was born, Phillips didn't work for several years and her acting career went into a decline.
''I went back to college to take bonehead English and typing,'' she said. ''When I finally went back to acting I wasn't the same actress who had left. I didn't want to please everyone as much. I wanted more to please myself.
''Acting isn't my whole life, but it's important to me. It's essential to my mental health. When I had my daughter and couldn't get back into acting I became afraid. I think that's why I didn't have more children. Subconsciously I was afraid it would hurt my career again.''
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