This article appeared in the November 1971 issue of After Noon TV.
It is accompanied by photos of Jane Brandon (Cathy Craig)& Nat Polen (Jim Craig)
This article wouldn't be here for your viewing without John. THANKS John!!!
How Joltin’ Jane went from benchwarmer in Beachwood, Ohio to most valuable soap opera player of the year…
Brandon At The Bat
Fortunately for lovers of acting talent, soap opera and those of us who revel in the sight of blue-eyed, brown-haired girls (who looks absolutely smashing in ribbed sweaters and hot pants), Jane Brandon did not become a spy, a veterinarian or a worker for the Peace Corps in some equatorial jungle.
Suffice it to say that she opted for acting, thus bringing her to the role of Cathy Craig in the daytime drama “One Life to Live.”
Why actors become actors is a question with innumerable answers. Some candidly admit they love the roar of the crowd. Others suggest the metaphysical. But Jane’s move toward the footlights was basic. As a youngster, she was crummy in baseball.
“I was always chosen last in baseball.” She said. “When you’re a kid, and you can’t play sports very well, life can be less than beautiful.” And that’s the way things remained until Jane turned ten, the age at which she went away to summer camp. The last pick in baseball, she was first in line for the role of the witch in “Hansel and Gretel.”
“My performance in the play turned me into somebody that earned respect from the kids,” said Jane. “I found out that there were things I could do on stage that I couldn’t do on a baseball field.”
Born in Beachwood, Ohio (she has two sisters, Amy and Betsy), a suburb of Cleveland where her father owns the Cleveland Automatic Washing Machine Company, Jane eventually majored in liberal arts at Ohio State and succeeded in fostering her acting career by painting the sky blue for a college performance of “Carousel.”
After she left Ohio State, however, she was briefly sidetracked by photography. That would-be career was almost immediately dashed by her employers. Because of her performance in the lab, they adamantly suggested she go to drama school.
“I got things mixed up in the dark room,” said Jane. “If I remember correctly, I think I broke a few enlargers.”
Enroute to acting, there were other jobs. To all of which, Jane added her own special flair.
As a file clerk, she managed to get all the secretaries to do yoga exercises. When she left that job, she moved into a staid insurance company, where she was put behind barricades “filing thin pieces of paper.”
“It was terribly straitlaced,” said Jane. “Nobody talked and everybody was scared to death of the president. I couldn’t believe he was less human than anybody else, so one day I put a fake snake in his potted plants. What did he do? He laughed. By the time I left the company, the office was buzzing and everybody was eating tootsie pops.”
After attending the Academy of Dramatic Arts, she toured with a production of “Barefoot in the Park,” did commercials (currently, she is the voice that peeps, “Hi. I’m the Northeast Yellowbird”), won a contract with CBS, and briefly appeared on “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing,” “Search for Tomorrow,” “As the World Turns” and “The Best of Everything.” Most recently, she also won a husband - Peter Schwartz, whose company - Interlock Creative Group – produces commercials for Hartz Mountain Food and Mutual of New York.
So much for the biographical Miss Brandon. Because having said all this, we now come to what is perhaps most intriguing about this lovely, fetching young lady from Ohio.
Jane Brandon is a dreamer. Now we don’t mean your everyday, run-of-the-mill kind of dreamer. We mean, this kid really dreams. In technicolor, with music. And most of those dreams have become reality.
For example:
She had a vivid dream about Chicago. The next day she called her sister, Betsy, and asked to speak to her mother. But her mom wasn’t home. She was, of course, in the windy city.
Then there was the time she dreamt that a satellite country of the Soviet Union was being invaded. A week later, the Russians pushed into Czechoslovakia.
She woke up one morning and told her husband that his sister was going to come up to his office. Something to do with hair, she said. He left for work a doubter, simply because his sister almost never came to his office. But when his sister popped up to the office o show him her new hair-do, he came home a believer.
Any subject is fodder for the Brandon dream mill. Nuptial in a Coloroda cave.0 acks of raincoats, dentists bills.
“I called my girlfriend,” said Jane, “and told her that I dreamed she had a tremendous dentist bill. There were long moments of silence. Then she said ‘How did you know? I just opened the mail and I still can’t believe the bill I’ve got for having my teeth capped.’”
There was one dream, however, that Jane wishes had never come true.
She has dreamt that president Kennedy was killed – She didn’t know how – and his wife was at the funeral wearing a black veil. “A year later,” said Jane, “the President was assassinated, and when I watched the funeral rites on the television, I noticed that Jackie Kennedy was wearing the identical veil I had seen in my dream.”
Oddly enough, Jane’s psychic powers have never been unconsciously exercised in her own personal life. Her dreams have never told her where her career will take her, or what the future portends.
Lest she be concerned about that, we’d like to say that she has nothing to worry about. When you have looks and talent in delicious combination, you don’t need dreams to tell you that you’re going to do all right in the world of reality.