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The lure of Knots Landing
I had a career before Knots Landing,''
says Michele Lee. ``And I've had an entirely different one since
the day I stepped on that street.'' Lee and other series regulars
- Kevin Dobson, Joan Van Ark, Ted Shackleford, Donna Mills and
Michelle Phillips - take a journey back in time with the two-part
reunion movie, Knots Landing: Back To The Cul-de-Sac, Wednesday
and Friday on Channels 4 and 9 at 9 p.m. ``I drove onto the
set and there was Kevin Dobson standing in front of our home.
Our home! See how far I had become Karen. Playing the same character
for 14 years can do that to you.'' Knots Landing ran an amazing
14 seasons, one more than Dallas, making it the second-longest-running
drama series on network TV, after Gunsmoke's 20 years. CBS finally
pulled the plug in 1993, when Knots was still a Top 20 show
and still beating NBC's L.A. Law, its direct competition, in
the ratings most weeks. ``We had simply become too expensive
to produce,'' says Lee. Other cast members have gone on to other
series. Dobson, who played Lee's husband, Mack, now films F/X
in Toronto. ``But I was bone tired,'' says Lee, ``No more series
for me, I said, so I got my own production company going and
we've made some darned good TV movies. One thing I vowed was
not to make those women-in-peril pictures that are awfully popular
but predictable.'' Last year, Lee became the first woman to
produce, write, direct and star in an original TV movie, Color
Me Perfect, about a free-spirited woman who is chosen for a
genetic experiment to improve her limited mental powers. And
she was Emmy-nominated as the star of TV bio-flick Big Dreams
& Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story. Lee is currently
developing another telebiography, this one on controversial
novelist Jacqueline Susann. Before Knots, Lee was a musical
comedy star and comedian, the daughter of a famous Hollywood
makeup artist. ``When I played Dottie,'' she says. ``people
would come up to me amazed that I could sing.'' Lee became a
Broadway star at 19 in the original production of How To Succeed
In Business Without Really Trying. She jumped to movies with
Walt Disney's The Love Bug and then starred with Dick Van Dyke
in The Comic, a cult classic about the travails of a silent
movie star. TV offered Lee failed pilots in which she played
perky Mary Tyler Moore-type characters. And then along came
the chance at Knots Landing. The series was originally created
by producer David Jacobs to be a middle-class serial stressing
serious issues. CBS looked at the scripts and passed on the
idea, suggesting instead a high-powered saga of love and greed
among Texas millionaires, a modern Cain and Abel. So Jacobs
went off to write Dallas, which became a big hit for CBS. ``The
network asked him for a spin-off and he resurrected his original
idea,'' Lee says. ``He took the third Ewing brother, Gary, and
put him into the story as viewers' bait. But we never had much
to do with Dallas.'' Lisa Hartman played band singer Ciji Dunne,
who was murdered, but Hartman proved so popular that she returned
the next season as lookalike waitress Cathy Geary. The biggest
star to emerge from the series was Alec Baldwin followed by
Nicollette Sheridan. ``I still say we were rooted in reality,''
laughs Lee. ``It's the women who understood my character and
would warn Kevin when he was out in a supermarket never to cheat
on me. There had to be some melodrama to perk along the plot.
We struggled with life's normal problems. And the conversations
I had with Mack in bed at night struck home - that's what I
was told. We represented hope for a working marriage.'' Lee
and co-star Julie Harris were nominated for Emmys in the show's
second season but never again. ``We were considered a soap and
the actors suffered because of it,'' Lee says, ``Cagney And
Lacey got all the awards. I maintain it is a very tough acting
assignment to make a serial come to life. But we got nothing
and neither did Dallas or Dynasty.'' Lee says that enough time
has passed since Knots folded that she might consider another
series. ``A comedy would be wonderful, but most of them fail.
A drama series involves a huge commitment of time. The fact
I'm still being asked is something.'' Lee says she was emotionally
drained on the last shooting day of the reunion movie. ``I walked
back to my trailer very slowly, didn't really want to go, and
Joan Van Ark had pinned a note to the door. It simply said:
`Karen - Love - Val.' And that really says it all, doesn't it?''
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