Again with feeling

As Sela Ward's cold complicated mom on Once and Again, Bonnie Bartlett continues a dynamic career playing strong wives and mothers

By Hilary De Vries -- Bonnie Bartlett just has the look. That mom look. But then, the real-life mother of two has had plenty of practice, having played mothers and wives for most of her 50-year career. As wily Ellen Craig, she ran rings around her grouchy spouse, Dr. Mark Craig (played by William Daniels, Bartlett's real-life husband) on St. Elsewhere. She took Tim Allen down a peg or two playing his mother on Home Improvement and was cast in another love match opposite Daniel on Boy Meets World. She gave Anthony Edwards pangs of guilt as his dying mom last season on ER. Now, on ABC's Once and Again, Bartlett is offering another pitch-perfect portrayal as Barbara Brooks, the widowed mother of Lily Manning, played by Sela Ward. (The show returns for second season in October).

"I never play doctors or judges," Bartlett says with a laugh, "but you name them, I've played their wife or mother."

Married to Daniels for nearly 50 years Bartlett would appear to be the subject of typecasting. She's mom to Michael 36, an assistant director and stage manger in L.A., and Robert, 34 an artist and computer-graphics designer in New York City, and a grandmother twice over. Piloting a Volvo station wagon to a lunch interview near her home in the San Fernado Valley, the youthful 71-year-old looks very much the well-heeled suburbanite. But when she launches into a racy discussion that covers everything from breasts ("Elaine May and I once agreed that they are useless to women during the day!") to how a certain Once and Again costar looks like an intriguing romantic partner, you realize she's definitely not one of the uptight women she plays.

"I can't help it that I have the bones of a Connecticut lady," she says, "I'll do anything for a laugh, even something vulgar. In fact Bill warned me before I came here, 'Now, be careful what you say'."

If Bartlett's outgoing personality is at odds with her parts, her recurring role as the repressed Barbara is proving to be more a stretch than she expected. "When I first got the script I loved it, because one of the things I do well is play off the man," says Bartlett, who was teamed with Paul Marzurski as Phil Brooks, Barbara's exuberant husband, for her initial episodes.

But when Mazursky told producers a few months into the series that he was returning to directing (his credits included "Down and Out in Beverly Hills"), they decided to kiss off his character. Bartlett, however, "will definitely stay on," says coexecutive producer Marshall Herskovitz. "She's a really smart actress who can play the difficult role of a woman who doesn't necessarily understand what she can't give her daughters," Lily (Ward) and Judy (Marin Hinkle). While Bartlett is happy to be part of the acclaimed drama, she is disappointed that Mazursky is gone and puzzled as to why Barbara "is so angry with her girls. I don't feel that kind of anger."

Despite her on-screen and off-screen mother loads, Bartlett almost didn't become a parent. The second child of a Shakespeare-quoting actor-turned-insurance salesman, E.E., and Carrie, a homemaker, Bartlett grew up in Moline, Illinois, intent on following her father's failed dream. "I was always Anna Actress, and I didn't want children," says Bartlett who met Daniels, a Brooklyn-born World War II veteran, during her freshman year at Northwestern University. soon after graduation the couple married and moved to New York City, where Bartlett supported them. A student of the legendary Lee Stasberg, she spent four years in the 1950s playing sexy Vanessa Raven on the CBS soap Love of Life.

It wasn't until Daniels began landing roles on Broadway ("1776") as well as in the films ("The Graduate") that Bartlett could concentrate on motherhood. Their fist child, a son born while Daniels was doing "The Zoo Story" in 1961, died within 24 hours due to complications during pregnancy. "Watching him in that little iron lung changed me forever," she says. But when the couple decided to adopt their two sons, the actress says she discovered she "loved caring for babies".

She became a full-time mom in the 1970s after the couple relocated to L.A. Although Bartlett had recurring parts on such series as Little House on the Prairie, it wasn't until Daniels won a lead role on St. Elsewhere in 1982 that she returned to acting in earnest. Daniels pressed her to read for the part of his wife, even though she wasn't interested. "He said it was very Myrna Loy," she says. That advice proved fortunate; they both won Emmys in 1986 (he'd already won one in 1985; she won again in 1987).

These days, while Daniels is serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, Bartlett's career is back in high gear, with recent appearances in the TV-movie Tuesdays With Morrie and the film "Primary Colors." The couple has also bought a Manhattan apartment to be closer to son Robert, his wife, Laura, and their two young daughters. In fact, Bartlett's biggest challenge these days is playing mother-in-law. "I have to be so careful; you want to just tell people what to do," she says. "But I really scored points when I got Once and Again. My daughter-in-law is a big Sela Ward fan."__TV Guide (July 15 - 21, 2000)