Viewing page 14 of 47

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[double line]]

Ted's on Broadway!

Ted Knight heads the cast of characters in the new comedy "Some of My Best Friends"

[[image - black & white photograph of Ted Knight and Alice Drummond]]]]
[[image - black & white photograph of Ted Knight and Gavin Reed]]
Top: Ted Knight and Alice Drummond in a scene from Some of My Best Friends, a new Stanley Hart play directed by Harold Prince. Above: Ted with Gavin Reed.

After seven successful years "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" retired itself last spring. Not a soul I know didn't feel sad. What will Saturday night be like without Mary and Lou and Murray and Sue Ann and Georgette and Ted? Yes, even Ted, that bumbling hambone anchorman of the six o'clock news. Now no one has an excuse anymore for staying home on Saturday night. Mary, we've been told, will do a couple of specials this year and eventually begin work on a new series. Lou (Ed Asner) and Sue Ann (Betty White) with Georgette (Georgia Engel) tagging along as her roommate, have already settled into their own spin-off series. While Ted has headed East to try Broadway ("at a substantial cut in pay") as star of Stanley Hart's Some of My Best Friends, directed by Harold Prince. In this new play, described as a "high comedy," Ted will be portraying Andrew Mumford, a business tycoon so frustrated by the throes of success that he withdraws from the everyday world and after shock treatment can only relate to a dog and a tree, played by Gavin Reed and Lee Wallace respectively.

After seven years all of Mary's WJM gang have become synonymous with their onscreen characters, so when I set off to meet Ted Knight a few days before Some of My Best Friends opens, I just naturally expect Ted Baxter, you know, Mr. Egocentric. I am wrong. Well, sort of. Instead Ted Knight is remarkably low-keyed and serious. Dressed in a beige leisure suit, with that Pearl Drop scrubbed smile, Cailfornia tan and slick platinum hair, he reminds you of some affluent out-of-towner. Only every now and then does he slip into his Ted Baxter routine ... like grabbing a bottle of catsup for his cheeseburger and announcing emphatically "I get to go first because I'm the star." Then he laughs that silly Ted Baxter 'heheheheheheh' laugh.

"I love Ted Baxter," he admits, "because to a small degree he is me. But playing Ted Baxter for seven years got to be trying. Oh they wanted me to do a spin-off too," he says off-handedly, "but I just couldn't see being stuck in the kitchen with Georgette for another five years." Instead he left the MTM fold and signed directly with CBS. He has just finished a pilot for a 

by Bernard Carragher

[[end page]]
[[start page]]

[[advertisement]]
[[image - apple sliced vertically with state outlines of Washington, Oregon, and California and major cities on left half]]

No matter how you slice it, only United gives the "Big Apple" the whole West Coast.

In the friendly skies, we give the West Coast top billing. We don't just take you to California, but we'll fly you to the Pacific Northwest, or even direct to Hawaii.

And United also has the most widebodies West, to keep you comfortable.

At United we give you the best of the West. We built the largest airline in the free world. Around you.

For reservations, call your Travel Agent or Corporate Travel Manager. Or call United at 212-867-3000 in New York or 201-624-1500 in Newark.

Partners in Travel with Western International Hotels.

Fly the friendly skies of United.
[[image - logo of United Airlines]]
[[/advertisement]]