The Many Faces of Love
Brian Keith: Love is playing family--not house!
By Ruth Waterbury

Would you believe a star who is totally happy? That's Brian Keith. Would you credit a complicated, very intelligent, utterly male male with a quick sense of humor? That's Brian Keith, the debonaire star of Family Affair, now swinging along in its second TV year, with every sign of going on indefinitely. Brian also gets in two big movie jobs a year--which certainly lets him not worry about eating money. His third movie this year is Reflections in a Golden Eye. Top billing goes to Liz Taylor and Marlon Brando. Top acting honors go to Brian. At the first preview in Hollywood he stole the film so completely that next morning the whole town was prophesying he must get an Academy nomination come next April--and very possibly take home the Golden Oscar itself. But Brian hasn't seen the movie--and possibly never will.

"I've made I don't know how many pictures," he says. "Forty, I guess. I've seen only about a half dozen of them. We made Reflections in a Golden Eye in Rome last spring. I really enjoyed working with Liz and Brando and that great director, John Huston. But the kind of picture I enjoy seeing is something like The Parent Trap. That was a charming thing with Hayley Mills playing my twin daughters. I saw that four times. I even took my wife's parents to see it. I like it so much I forgot I was in it, as a matter of fact."

We were sitting in the exquisite library of Brian's house, as we talked. It is a fabulous room, wood-paneled, with books from floor to ceiling, very well read books. A fire burned in a tiny fireplace. Over the doorway an old, beautifully carved crucifix hung. It wasn't a movie star atmosphere, but then nothing about Brian, except his unique handsomeness, gives you that atmosphere, anyhow. Everything about his is unexpected. For instance, he's the only star in Hollywood who has no press agent. "What for?" he asks. "I don't go to the Daisy or any of that. We don't give parties under a striped awning out over the lawn for two hundred people, four of whom we like."

Characteristic of his distinctiveness, however, is the house he owns in oldest Bel Air, and the car he drives. Keith's house looks about medieval from the outside, with its round tower and its great bricked courtyard. Inside it has twenty-one rooms. Yet, Brian drives a Pontiac. "It goes just as fast as a Rolls-Royce," he says. That's all that counts.

Touchy subject

I had arrived at him home, the day of our appointment, before he had. I'd been warned by a couple of his buddies that I'd better not bring up the subject of his children. "He gets so tired of being asked what it's like playing with three kids on A Family Affair (sic), he's rather touchy on the subject," they claimed.

So, the very first surprise was that the door was opened, not by a servant but by a young woman with a dark lovely face ad a flawless figure. She was wearing perfectly cut pants and a matching shirt. Her dark hair was tied with a bow at the nape of her neck and fell nearly to her waist. Her hands were white with flour and a smudge was on her chin.

She beamed, saying, "I'm Mrs. Keith. Forgive the way I look, but I'm making pies. Do come in. Brian got held up at the studio, but he's on his way. Would you like some coffee?" She led me into the library, and when I declined the coffee, left to go back to the kitchen. Almost at once a tiny girl with the same dark hair and eyes trotted into the room, a poodle following her.

"Hello," she said with the greatest of ease. "I'm Mimi. I'm six and a half. In a couple of weeks I'm going to be seven, the same age as my sister, Betty." She stopped and noted a second little girl advancing on us. Mimi came close enough to me to whisper: "That's Betty. I'll only be the same age with her a few weeks."

A third little girl appeared. This, it turned out was Barbara Rose. Barbara quickly announced she was going on nine. She further explained that all three sisters were going to a party, this being a Saturday. Their brother, Rory, a mere five, ad already left for a party for boys.

Outdoors, right then, a car door slammed. It was a station wagon with some ohter children in it it, and the three little Keiths ran out to join them. Then they all began to squeal as their father pulled in, in the Pontiac. Great kisses and hugs were exchanged, whereupon the kids took off and Daddy came in.

He settled himself down into a chair opposite mine beside the fireplace. Lay out in it, really. He was so relaxed he sat practically on the back of his neck, his long legs thrust out beside him. He's taller than he appears on screen. Like Gable before him, his shoulders are so broad they make him appear less than his six-foot-one.

He smiled, and it's a wonderfully warm smile. "If I live to be a hundred--and I hope I do--I won't have time to read all the books I want to read, or talk to the people I want to know. Not party talk. That's a waste of time. Real talk."

"I met your three little girls," I said, figuring if the bomb was going to fall, this was the time for it.

He gave me a long look, smiled again. The heavens didn't open. "I was alone too much as a kid," he said. "My folks separated before I was four. I was an only child. That's no good. I lived with my mother down on Long Island and once in a while I saw my father. But I really never knew him until we were both cast, by accident, in Mr. Roberts on Broadway. By that time, I was in my mid-twenties. I'd had four years of war, and other years of doing any old kind of a job to survive.

"What delights me about our kids is that they don't play house. The play family. That's love. Everybody n this house gets into the act, which includes their mother, myself, the two dogs and the litle of seven pups one presented us with yesterday. Plus cats and hamsters.

"We teach them to live now, not tomorrow or next week, but now. We always have projects going. Right now we are building a split-level tree house on two great branches of an old tree, here on the grounds. I am boss carpenter but they all help. We have flooring in now and the sides up, but the room is made of sticking up poles, like a tepee. That's to let the sun in and keep anyone from falling out.

"We all have tasks, too. On Sundays my chief task is making the pancakes for breakfast. I pour the batter out in an outline and the first child who knows whether that outline will be turned into a Flipper or a Pinocchio, or Snow White or even a Santa Claus gets a reward.

"We have a distinct understanding in our house that such awards are for being smart. There are none for being good. We all go to mass together and we all know that people are supposed to be good, not to be rewarded for it. But in this house, if anybody gets ornery for any reason, they get ignored. I think lots of kids, like today's hippies, get out of line because that is when they get te most attention from their families. But if you express your love of a child by entering into his activities and letting him enter into yours, you don't have trouble--or at least we don't."

He paused thoughtfully for a moment. "It took me quite a while to learn that kids just like to be with you. Too many parents--particularly divorced parents when they are with their children--think they have to be amused all of the time, or fed or something.

"When I first began in A Family Affair, our kids wanted to meet these kids--who they sort of figure are related to them. I didn't take them to the studio at first, because I thought I'd be gone all day, and that would be too tiring for them, and what would we do with them? Rory, in particular, he's so young. He thinks Anissa is just his age--which, of course, she isn't. But the first time I did take him, it was sufficient pleasure for him just to be there, to be with me.

"Now I take them all over, usually one at a time, as they feel more important that way. Generally, that's in summer, when school is out, but occasionally I can take them during the school year late in the afternoon. In summer, too, they are allowed to stay up to see A Family Affair--though at all times TV is rationed in this house to one hour a day."

He laughed suddenly. "It delights me to discover how much children enjoy being asked for advice. Now you know that every adult in the world responds to that request with great pleasure. But I find with my kids that asking their advice on how to do things is pure joy for them. We don't approve of their having mechanical toys, particularly the little girls with those dolls that do everything--and stop their imaginations from developing. I don't so much mind their having toy cars, which give them some sense of adult driving.

"So it delights me when something like Barbara's making me my birthday present happens. I must admit I had to puzzle a bit at first to know what it was. It was a positive forest of popsickle (sic) sticks. She'd painted them and then glued a calendar on them. I was properly overcome." Mrs. Keith came in at that moment to re-check the coffee situation. That's when I learned they never drink anything stronger than that. She smiled at her handsome husband who was warmly smiling at her. "I had enough pie crust left over to make jam tarts, too."

Looking at her made me recall that she and Brian had me at Paramount, when he was doing Alaska Seas and she was a dancer on Red Garters.

He had not become an actor until he was twenty-six and then it had happened almost accidentally, because a friend of his mother's, who had long since retired from her career, wanted young actors for his stock company.

Brian, talking about this said, "When I got out of the war, I was qualified for nothing except to be a gunman. I could have gone to college on my G.I. bill, but the idea of studying for what, to be a bachelor of arts in what--that didn't get to me. I wavered on taking a room in my mother's apartment, which was near Columbia University, and going there to study creative writing.

"Right then I got this acting offer. I really hadn't thought of following in my parents' profession. But I needed work. Later, when the Broadway season started, I auditioned for shows and got in two that were flops. But the next time around, I got in a good one. I haven't been out of work since.

Brian had been brought out to Hollywood in 1952 to play opposite Jennifer Jones, then a top star. Only, Miss Jones changed her mind, and Brian had to scramble for another job, which he found.

One tragedy

Except for one tragedy, it has been an ideal marriage. That was the death of their first born son, Michael. I would never have brought up that subject with Brian, but he brought it up himself by pointing to a small photograph of the boy, there in the library. "Mike would have been twelve now, if he had lived," his father said. "He died at eight of pneumonia, one of those terrifying quick illnesses children get."

He sat very still, while the silence deepened around us. Then he suddenly said, "Did I tell you Rory had learned to read this year, his first at any school? The girls do well, too. They all go to Good Shepherd Parish, which is run by Holy Cross nuns."

He stood up, very tall, very straight. "I've been fortunate," he said. "Most of the mistakes I've made have been small. When they were big ones, they hurt nobody but me--which is luck. I go to work and I come home from work and here's my family. When I have to go abroad for a picture, as I did, to Spain, I go alone because my wife won't be separated from the children for more than two weeks, and I agree with that.

"I arrived in Spain on April 3rd and got back on July 23rd, a Sunday. It was fantastic. The day before I'd finished the last shot in the studio at 12:15 and at 1:15 I was on a jet. I got here late that night, slept a couple of hours, got up at five, reached the studio at quarter of seven, got my hair cut and there were thirty scripts of A Family Affair I'd never seen before, staring at me. It is an unbelievable production job they do.

"We started that day and we worked five weeks and when we finished, we had twelve complete shows in the can and parts of fourteen others."

I stood up, too, but Brian wanted me to see the seven pups before I left, and the beautiful drawing room his house has, and the paintings he and his wife have collected, wonderful paintings. I said goodbye to Mrs. Keith and he walked with me out to my car.

"Come again," he said, "and I'll tell you about my mother, who took up painting when she was seventy-five. You see, she loves life, too."

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