The Many Faces of Love
Kathy Garver: Love is Getting Involved!
By Jane Allen

Kathy Garver earnestly declared, "It's about time for me to fall in love. I think 1968 may be the year. For the first time in my life, I can see myself being married. I mean, he hasn't come along yet...I haven't the slightest idea whom he might be. But the point is, I'm ready. And it has nothing to do with age (she was twenty this December 13). Six months ago, I wouldn't have been sitting here, saying this. Six months ago, I was a child...you know, very naive and innocent--or at least telling myself that's how I should be. Today, I feel very different. I feel like, all of a sudden, I've grown up. I'm a woman!" Like video alter ego Cissy, the teenager Kathy plays on Family Affair, she has a wide-eyed eagerness, an irrepressible vitality. She tends to talk in italics...and at full gallop, as if she's afraid she'll forget what she wants to say before she can get the words out. Her breathless sentences are punctuated with girlish giggles and flurries of hand gestures.

"The key word is commitment. When I began the series, I wasn't commited to anything in life," she took off in high gear again. "I was just sailing along, skimming the surface. I mean, I was doing a lot of things. I was constantly on the go--but I wasn't really involved with any of them. Like dating: I'd go out maybe four times a week--mostly with college boys since I was going to UCLA. I was planning to be a lady lawyer because I've always loved debating. I was in a sorority (Pi Phi). But I was never pinned or engaged. I never even went steady. And I could never really understand why most of my girlfriends were always wailing, 'Ohhh! He didn't call. What am I gonna do?' Because, you know, if one guy didn't call, then another one certainly would. I wouldn't allow myself, for some reason, to even consider a serious relationship. I went out just for fun, for the evening's entertainment. There would be maybe a goodnight kiss. And that was it. No effort to get to know him as a person; no relationship in any depth. Whenever I wanted to go below the surface, my great 'escape thing' was philosophizing on The Meaning of Life.

Out of it

If one of my dates would make further 'advances,' he might just as well have saved his energy. Because I'd automatically reject him.

"I'm sure my background had a lot to do with it. I'm the youngest in the family, with an older sister and two older brothers--which is like having three fathers and two mothers--and for six years I went to a Catholic school in Beverly Hills. So I was really very insulated from the big, bad world.

"I didn't know how babies were born until the end of tenth grade. Mom just wasn't the type to sit you down and 'tell you things.' When I was about sixteen she said, 'Well, you know...uh, things, don't you?' And I said, 'Sure, Mom. Don't worry.' Because by then I did know; I'd learned everything from my girl friends. I might have found out before, but in high school I was a cheerleader so I didn't take the biology courses where they explain all that very scientifically.

"It was the same with acting: no commitment, no real involvement. I'd been taking singing and dancing lessons since age three; I began acting at five. I was very precocious when I was young. I was doing TV and movies, stage shows--a little of everything...but I never stopped going to school. My parents always treated the show biz stuff as something that was fun, like a hobby. "So, when someone asked, 'What do you do?' I'd say, 'Oh, I work in TV.' I'd never refer to myself as an actress. I didn't consider it a career. If people asked about that, I'd tell them, "I'm studying to be a lawyer.' Actually, I finished three years of college before going into A Family Affair (sic).

But then last spring, I went to New York on my own. That was kind of a Big Step, too, even though I stayed with my married sister who lives in Larchmont, a suburb about thirty miles north--and anyway, this lady, a perfect stranger, asked me about myself and immediately I said, 'I'm an actress.' Those few words signified so much. I realized how different my ideas, my attitudes had become...and of course, I'm still evolving.

"Well...more than anything," she said carefully, sifting her semantics like a true legal eagle, "it was spending every day with someone like Brian Keith. He helped me develop...he helped me grow up...he helped me become a woman. Not so much by what he might have said to me, or done for me...but mostly by his own example; by being the kind of man he is. "I probably hesitated about committing myself to acting because I had this notion that once you were an actress, Capital 'A,' that meant you dedicated yourself to it...that nothing else mattered...that you couldn't stay intact as a person.

"And then I met Brian Keith, who is a very fine actor and, at the same time, just as much a warm, sincere human being--a man who's completely true and steadfast to himself and his beliefs.

Kathy can't tell

"I never told Brian how much he influenced me. Good gosh, no! It would certainly embarrass him...but it would embarrass me much more...

"I have very few idols, very few heroes--actually none. But I respect and admire Brian more than anyone I've ever met in show business. It isn't the kind of thing where I go running to him with every little problem, but if there was something really bothering me, I could turn to him in a minute.

"I have to laugh when I think that, at first, I was almost afraid of him. Well, maybe not exactly afraid, but a little wary. We didn't get together until the day we started filming the pilot. Someone introduced us--and the first thing that hit me was his smile; it bowls you over. Then, bing! Out of the memory files it came to me that I'd worked with him, before. And I reminded him, 'Remember when you had The Crusader series? I played a little waif in one of the shows.'

"He said, 'Oh, yes. Of course.' And he recalled my whole part. He looked at me with his head slightly to one side--the way he does when he's teasing--and he said solemnly, but with his eyes twinkling like mad, 'I should have recognized you...but you have changed a little in ten years!' He was so relaxed and casual and beaming at everybody that I thought, He can't be for real. Nobody is that nice. Kathy, old girl, you'd better watch out!

"But this was Brian, nothing 'put on.' With Brian, the label is love. For his wife and his children; for the people he works with, especially the little kids on the show.

"From the beginning, Brian has been looking out for me as a person--guiding me along the path he thinks is best, but always letting me do it for myself. It's like pointing out the directions rather than leading someone there by the hand.

Greenwich Village and grow up

"During our hiatus (spring vacation) people would ask me, 'What are you going to do, Kathy? Work? Make a movie?' And immediately, Brian said, 'No. No, she's going to New York and she's going to Greenwich Village and she's going to grow up and be independent.'

"So I went to New York...and I really think it was the 'turning point.' Of course, I'd been building to it all fall and winter. But New York was the farthest from Southern California I'd ever gone by myself. I stayed with my sister, but I was in the Big City alone...and it's terribly exhilarating...but it's also a little scary. If you're not prepared for New York, just walking down the street can be an experience. I actually stopped in the middle of a block and I said to myself, 'Okay, Kathy, this is it. There isn't anybody to tell you what to do or how to do it or anybody to maybe protect you along the way. It's strictly up to you.'

"One day I was looking at the map on the subway and not making head or tail of it. I kind of had to lean over this one man to read it and he finally got up and gave me his seat. He was kind of disreputable looking, but back then I was still thinking that everything in the world was sweetness and light. So instead of saying 'Thanks' and ignoring him, I gave him my biggest smile and I asked him if he knew which train I should take to Grand Central. He said, 'Yes. Follow me when the train stops.' And I said, very brightly, 'Okay.' Boy! I was so naive it was unreal!"

Typically, she was reminiscing in vivid, dramatic style. "When the train stopped, he grabbed my arm and he said, 'Come! This way.' And I said, still very polite and smiling, 'Oh, that's okay. I can find it myself.'

"'No!' he insisted. 'You come with me.' And he dragged me across the platform. I didn't scream or anything--because I was still in my innocent period...I mean, I wouldn't let myself imagine what he might be trying to do. Okay. So he started pulling me up some stairs and through the crowds...and finally, I got a little scared and I broke loose and ran. He caught me at the foot of the stairs and got hold of my arm again. But I still didn't scream. It was almost like I was watching it happen to someone else. It couldn't be happening to me!

"The really frightening thing was all the people watching us--and some of them must have realized what was going on, but nobody made a move to help me. I wrenched myself away from him and dashed into a train, just as the door was closing. So I made the great getaway. And then I got really, really scared. I was shaking. I still shake now, when I think about it. I never went near the subway again. I learned my lesson, I sure did: These things exist in the world and you'd better be aware of them!

"Now with people, especially the men in my life, I want much more lasting relationships. I don't think first any more, Is he cute looking and fun for the evening? "The person I fall in love with will have a very strong personality; he'll be somewhat protective. He'll probably be blond and blue-eyed, not too pretty, but interesting looking: ruggedly handsome. He'll be bright, intellectually-oriented but not too deep, because I tend to be that way and if both of us got bogged down in philosophy, we'd never get anything practical done!

"He'll have great sensitivity and understanding...and a lot of enthusiasm for whatever of the moment--making a big business deal or hiking up a hill in the country. Someone who gets involved.

"Most of all," she said softly, "he'll have to love me more than anything else. After that, I think everything else automatically falls into place. His career will come before mine, but even after I have babies and my own home, I'll be doing a little acting or writing or painting. I need to have a 'creative outlet.'"

Until he hovers onto her horizon, Kathy plans to continue living with her parents in their new, hi-rise Hollywood apartment, which she decorated in "muddled Danish modern." She hopes to get her college degree, as a speech major, by taking night courses. But she hasn't completely shelved her lady lawyer ambitions: "Maybe one day I'll play the part in a TV show or movie," she suggests with characteristic optimism. "You never know..." Or, she may be involved with love. After all, it is 1968.

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