Q 6

PLAYBOY: You made your film debut in Ride the High Country. What was it like for a very young, stage-trained actress to suddenly find herself directed by a wild man like Sam Peckinpah?

Mariette Hartley: I didn't know who he was. I didn't even know who Joel McCrea was, or Randolph Scott. I met with Sam. He had his feet up on his desk and he had his hat on. And I fell in love and he fell in love. So I tested for him. They put me in a dress that was at least a size 12. Sam kept taking the wardrobe people aside and telling them something. All I know is that I kept getting more and more top-heavy and they stuck one of Deborah Kerr's old wigs on my head. I walked around--only by that time, I'd forgotten how to walk--pretending that I'd been built all my life. And, by God, I got the part. I have absolutely no idea why, except that I was so built.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: Was film acting different from stage acting?

Mariette Hartley: Oh, yes. I remember asking Joel McCrea for advice. And he said, "There are two really important things. First, always read the scene before the one you're doing. And, second, make sure you suck in your stomach."

Q 8

PLAYBOY: Alfred Hitchcock, who often said that actors should be treated like cattle, was another of your early directors. Did you like being herded by him in Marnie?

Mariette Hartley: At first, he was very sweet to me. We had a repartee that was nice and light. Then we did one scene and he didn't talk to me again for the rest of the film. I took it personally. Now I wonder if he weren't so concerned with the rest of the film that he just forgot I was there. He tended to like ladies who seemed graceful and feminine and not like a big puppy in a glass shop--which is what I was. I'm still that way, but somehow it's more becoming now. Anyway, I felt it turned him off. When I tried asking him about it, he said, "You have a lot of trouble with men, don't you, Miss Hartley?" I'm not sure what he was getting at. Men in this town sometimes have odd concepts of women.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: Can you give us another example of a man's having an odd concept of you?

Mariette Hartley: I auditioned for the part in Peyton Place of Claire Morton, a doctor who was frigid. I dressed for the part--wore my Connecticut suit, had my little black-alligator shoes, my black bag and my little silk blouse. The producer and the directors were doing three shows a week, which was murder. I'd come on the set every day and they would say, "Don't forget. She's frigid." And I'd say, "I know! You keep telling me that. Is there something I'm not doing? I'm crossing my legs a lot. I'm not smiling. What else should I be doing?" They just persisted in reminding me. Thirty-four episodes later, I flew off to the Andes with Leslie Nielsen and never went back to Peyton Place again. Not only that, I didn't work for the producer for a long time. And I couldn't figure out why. I asked somebody who knew him to find out, and the answer came back that he thought I was frigid. And, by God, he did hire me again--to play a frigid schoolteacher in Judd, for the Defense. I don't understand any of it.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: In addition to having been oddly typecast, you've also managed to land some peculiar roles. Care to describe some of them for us?

Mariette Hartley: : I played a girl with two navels in the TV movie Genesis II. I thought it was going to make me the sex symbol of Los Angeles. It didn't work out that way. I remember, though, I was going with a guy who really got turned on by those two navels. I was glad they could be applied very quickly.

I also was the bride of The Incredible Hulk--which sounds so awful and science-fictiony. But the episode turned out to be very sensitively written and directed. I won an Emmy for it, but, as one of the judges informed me, there was not a lot of competition that year.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: You even managed to lure Mr. Spock into the sack on a Star Trek episode. How did you seduce him, by appealing to his logic?

Mariette Hartley: No. I taught him how to eat meat. Before he met me, he had been a vegetarian. That's a nicer way to say it.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: You decided to give up acting for a while. What happened?

Mariette Hartley: I said, "The heck with this; what I really want to do with my life is sell budget dresses." Seriously, things weren't working well. I'd been acting every single, solitary day for 16 years, and I was just wiped out. I had lost confidence. So I went to I. Magnin's and worked in budget dresses--which was next to better dresses--which was fun because all the ladies with their blue hair and their little white collars had been there for 86 years. I was selling like crazy. People felt sorry for me. "I remember you from that commercial," they'd say. "Isn't it too bad you're here now? I'll buy this and this and this." One day, I needed an alterationist and went through the circuitous route of fancy dressing rooms, where Miss Betty was. I passed Greer Garson, who was trying on a sequined red gown. I was calling for Miss Rosie, the alterationist. Miss Betty rushed through the curtains and said, "What're you doing here, kid? What is that, a $36 dress? Honey, this is where the minks and the diamonds are. You want to wreck a sale?" I said, "Gee, no, but is Rosie in there?" "Not only is she not in here, I wouldn't send her out to you if she were." She added, "I'll see you later," and I said, "Gosh, I don't think so." And I quit. I went into the store the other day and Miss Betty was still wearing her white collar. It's such fun now to say, "I don't want that dress, Miss Betty. I don't like it at all."