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An Interview With Jan Smithers, Newsweek Teen Cover Star in 1966
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Ubiquitous
Jun 17, 2018, 6:52:24 PM6/17/18
to
In 1966, Newsweek published a landmark cover story, “The Teen-Agers: A
Newsweek Survey of What They’re Really Like,” investigating everything
from politics and pop culture to teens' views on their parents, their
future and the world. The article was based on an extensive survey of
nearly 800 teens across the country, and it also profiled six teens in
depth, including a black teen growing up in Chicago, a Malibu girl, and
a farm boy in Iowa. Fifty years later, Newsweek set out to discover
what’s changed and what’s stayed the same for American teens. The
result, “The State of the American Teenager,” offers fascinating and
sometimes disturbing insights into a generation that’s plugged in,
politically aware, and optimistic about their futures, yet anxious
about their country.
It took the assistance of half a dozen people and months of dead ends
to track down Jan Smithers, by far the most famous of the six teenagers
Newsweek profiled in 1966. After appearing on the cover of Newsweek’s
teen issue—blond, sun-kissed, seated on a motorcycle and flashing a
killer smile—Smithers received calls from “many, many” Hollywood agents
hoping to represent her. Today, she’s most known for playing Bailey
Quarters in WKRP in Cincinnati, which aired from 1978 to 1982. She was
also married to actor James Brolin for nine years.
Today, however, she lives in Southern California and avoids the
spotlight. (Her most recent IMDb entry, for Mr. Nice Guy, is from
1987.) “People don’t even know I’m an actor! If I ever let them know,
they’re so surprised,” she says. “I’m very private about my personal
life.” Asked if her life unfolded how she imagined it would, she bursts
out laughing. “No! Because of Newsweek magazine, I didn’t have a chance
to imagine how it would come out!”
Before Newsweek, Smithers was just a 16-year-old Valley girl. She grew
up in a modest middle-class family in Los Angeles. Her father was a
lawyer, her mother a homemaker, and she had three sisters, though the
eldest died in a car accident at 21. Smithers was shy, liked art and
was lukewarm on school. “Sometimes, when I’m sitting in my room, I just
feel like screaming and pounding my pillow,” she told Newsweek. “I’m so
confused about this whole world and everything that’s happening.”
She attended Taft High School, and one day a guy she knew asked her to
go surfing with him. “I thought, No, I couldn’t! I can’t play hookie!”
But he talked her into it. The beach was empty, and Smithers remembers
sitting on the sand watching him surf, wondering what her mother would
say when she got home. Suddenly, she spotted two men dressed in black
walking toward her. “They looked like little pencils walking down the
beach. One had long hair and cameras around his neck. They walked right
up to me and said, ‘We’re doing an article on teens across the country,
and we’re looking for a girl from California. We’re wondering if you’d
be interested in doing the article.’”
Smithers said yes. After the article came out, her mother took her to
meet agents in Hollywood. “I remember sleeping in the car with her. She
was looking for someone who communicated like a person.” Smithers did
commercials while finishing her last two years of high school.
She was accepted to Chouinard Art Institute, now the California
Institute of the Arts, but quit after a couple of years to pursue
acting full time. It paid off. In her early 20s, she landed a role in
the 1974 film Where the Lilies Bloom, about a family of children living
in the Appalachian Mountains. Four years later, she got her big break
on the Friday night sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. She calls her success
“destiny” but also sees it as dumb luck: “Honest to God, I don’t know
how it happened!”
Smithers met her former husband, Brolin, on the set of Hotel, an ’80s
prime-time drama from Aaron Spelling. “I had been in WKRP, a situation
comedy, which is a fast-paced dialogue between people,” Smithers says.
“When I did Hotel, we were about to do our scene, and James asked me if
I was scared. I was sure of my lines, and I said no, I wasn’t. I
realized that he might be scared! And I realized he was a very sincere
person. I don't know if he remembers that or not, but our relationship
developed on sincerity.”
They married in 1986 and have one daughter, Molly, who’s 28. When
Smithers first learned she was pregnant, she planned to take six months
off before returning to work. “I loved having a career, but when I met
Molly, I just looked at her and told her, ‘You need me.’ And she looked
at me so innocently. I thought, I have to stay! She changed my life. I
really longed to be her mom.”
After nine years of marriage, Smithers and Brolin divorced. “It was
good—really good—but somehow, somewhere, we started to wander,” she
says. “He traveled a lot for work. We grew apart. He was gone months at
a time.” Smithers also yearned for a life outside Hollywood. “I had
Molly and wanted to be in the country and get away from that world. I
just wanted a different life, and we ended up getting divorced.”
When Molly reached high school, Smithers traveled to India with a
charitable group. She was astonished at the hardships she witnessed
there and moved by the people she met. For the first time, it dawned on
her: “I could make a difference.” She spent the next 16 years going to
India. “I learned to meditate there, and I changed a great deal. I got
out of myself.”
These days, Smithers’s life largely revolves around meditation,
healing, spirit uality and the environment. She talks about yoga guru
Swami Muktananda, Indian spiritual guru Mata Amritanandamayi (known as
Amma the Hugging Saint) and Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva as if
they’re her family. And she believes that helping people—neighbors and
enemies—can heal anyone and any situation, from fights among friends to
wars between nations. As she puts it, “the answer to peace in the
universe is love.” Asked what advice she’d give young people, she
exclaims, “Read Autobiography of a Yogi! Get a hug from Amma! Make use
of your time here! In my life, I found these things because I looked
for them. I’m always in a place to receive the next thing. This is the
real march, the quiet people’s change.”
Over the years, Smithers has used her fame to support causes she cares
about. “I stood for no nukes. I spoke for solar energy. I was invited
to Washington and spoke in a subcommittee. I did a terrible job—it was
way over my head—but I did it,” she says. “My spiritual teachers always
say, stay out of politics. But do you know what the byproduct of
nuclear energy is?” she asks, then launches into a 10-minute spiel on
plutonium. “I am so anti–nuclear energy.”
Smithers is surprised to learn that 82 percent of teens today believe
racial discrimination will be a problem for their generation. “People
are people; we’re all the same,” she says. The key to solving
discrimination and violence, she thinks, is “peace in your inner world.
There’s such a commotion about the world, but we can find peace at any
given moment. Conflicts are not etched in stone.” Yet she worries about
how the economy will affect young people. “If this whole generation
can’t buy a home because they have to pay off their college education,
what have we done?”
Recently, I called Smithers to ask her a few follow-up questions. We
spoke for nearly an hour, and later that day, she called back and left
a message. “I just thought of that whole conversation we had about
discrimination,” she says with her soft voice in the recording. “I
don't really know the answer, but God does. You could write that down.”
--
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.
Newsweek Survey of What They’re Really Like,” investigating everything
from politics and pop culture to teens' views on their parents, their
future and the world. The article was based on an extensive survey of
nearly 800 teens across the country, and it also profiled six teens in
depth, including a black teen growing up in Chicago, a Malibu girl, and
a farm boy in Iowa. Fifty years later, Newsweek set out to discover
what’s changed and what’s stayed the same for American teens. The
result, “The State of the American Teenager,” offers fascinating and
sometimes disturbing insights into a generation that’s plugged in,
politically aware, and optimistic about their futures, yet anxious
about their country.
It took the assistance of half a dozen people and months of dead ends
to track down Jan Smithers, by far the most famous of the six teenagers
Newsweek profiled in 1966. After appearing on the cover of Newsweek’s
teen issue—blond, sun-kissed, seated on a motorcycle and flashing a
killer smile—Smithers received calls from “many, many” Hollywood agents
hoping to represent her. Today, she’s most known for playing Bailey
Quarters in WKRP in Cincinnati, which aired from 1978 to 1982. She was
also married to actor James Brolin for nine years.
Today, however, she lives in Southern California and avoids the
spotlight. (Her most recent IMDb entry, for Mr. Nice Guy, is from
1987.) “People don’t even know I’m an actor! If I ever let them know,
they’re so surprised,” she says. “I’m very private about my personal
life.” Asked if her life unfolded how she imagined it would, she bursts
out laughing. “No! Because of Newsweek magazine, I didn’t have a chance
to imagine how it would come out!”
Before Newsweek, Smithers was just a 16-year-old Valley girl. She grew
up in a modest middle-class family in Los Angeles. Her father was a
lawyer, her mother a homemaker, and she had three sisters, though the
eldest died in a car accident at 21. Smithers was shy, liked art and
was lukewarm on school. “Sometimes, when I’m sitting in my room, I just
feel like screaming and pounding my pillow,” she told Newsweek. “I’m so
confused about this whole world and everything that’s happening.”
She attended Taft High School, and one day a guy she knew asked her to
go surfing with him. “I thought, No, I couldn’t! I can’t play hookie!”
But he talked her into it. The beach was empty, and Smithers remembers
sitting on the sand watching him surf, wondering what her mother would
say when she got home. Suddenly, she spotted two men dressed in black
walking toward her. “They looked like little pencils walking down the
beach. One had long hair and cameras around his neck. They walked right
up to me and said, ‘We’re doing an article on teens across the country,
and we’re looking for a girl from California. We’re wondering if you’d
be interested in doing the article.’”
Smithers said yes. After the article came out, her mother took her to
meet agents in Hollywood. “I remember sleeping in the car with her. She
was looking for someone who communicated like a person.” Smithers did
commercials while finishing her last two years of high school.
She was accepted to Chouinard Art Institute, now the California
Institute of the Arts, but quit after a couple of years to pursue
acting full time. It paid off. In her early 20s, she landed a role in
the 1974 film Where the Lilies Bloom, about a family of children living
in the Appalachian Mountains. Four years later, she got her big break
on the Friday night sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. She calls her success
“destiny” but also sees it as dumb luck: “Honest to God, I don’t know
how it happened!”
Smithers met her former husband, Brolin, on the set of Hotel, an ’80s
prime-time drama from Aaron Spelling. “I had been in WKRP, a situation
comedy, which is a fast-paced dialogue between people,” Smithers says.
“When I did Hotel, we were about to do our scene, and James asked me if
I was scared. I was sure of my lines, and I said no, I wasn’t. I
realized that he might be scared! And I realized he was a very sincere
person. I don't know if he remembers that or not, but our relationship
developed on sincerity.”
They married in 1986 and have one daughter, Molly, who’s 28. When
Smithers first learned she was pregnant, she planned to take six months
off before returning to work. “I loved having a career, but when I met
Molly, I just looked at her and told her, ‘You need me.’ And she looked
at me so innocently. I thought, I have to stay! She changed my life. I
really longed to be her mom.”
After nine years of marriage, Smithers and Brolin divorced. “It was
good—really good—but somehow, somewhere, we started to wander,” she
says. “He traveled a lot for work. We grew apart. He was gone months at
a time.” Smithers also yearned for a life outside Hollywood. “I had
Molly and wanted to be in the country and get away from that world. I
just wanted a different life, and we ended up getting divorced.”
When Molly reached high school, Smithers traveled to India with a
charitable group. She was astonished at the hardships she witnessed
there and moved by the people she met. For the first time, it dawned on
her: “I could make a difference.” She spent the next 16 years going to
India. “I learned to meditate there, and I changed a great deal. I got
out of myself.”
These days, Smithers’s life largely revolves around meditation,
healing, spirit uality and the environment. She talks about yoga guru
Swami Muktananda, Indian spiritual guru Mata Amritanandamayi (known as
Amma the Hugging Saint) and Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva as if
they’re her family. And she believes that helping people—neighbors and
enemies—can heal anyone and any situation, from fights among friends to
wars between nations. As she puts it, “the answer to peace in the
universe is love.” Asked what advice she’d give young people, she
exclaims, “Read Autobiography of a Yogi! Get a hug from Amma! Make use
of your time here! In my life, I found these things because I looked
for them. I’m always in a place to receive the next thing. This is the
real march, the quiet people’s change.”
Over the years, Smithers has used her fame to support causes she cares
about. “I stood for no nukes. I spoke for solar energy. I was invited
to Washington and spoke in a subcommittee. I did a terrible job—it was
way over my head—but I did it,” she says. “My spiritual teachers always
say, stay out of politics. But do you know what the byproduct of
nuclear energy is?” she asks, then launches into a 10-minute spiel on
plutonium. “I am so anti–nuclear energy.”
Smithers is surprised to learn that 82 percent of teens today believe
racial discrimination will be a problem for their generation. “People
are people; we’re all the same,” she says. The key to solving
discrimination and violence, she thinks, is “peace in your inner world.
There’s such a commotion about the world, but we can find peace at any
given moment. Conflicts are not etched in stone.” Yet she worries about
how the economy will affect young people. “If this whole generation
can’t buy a home because they have to pay off their college education,
what have we done?”
Recently, I called Smithers to ask her a few follow-up questions. We
spoke for nearly an hour, and later that day, she called back and left
a message. “I just thought of that whole conversation we had about
discrimination,” she says with her soft voice in the recording. “I
don't really know the answer, but God does. You could write that down.”
--
Dems & the media want Trump to be more like Obama, but then he'd
have to audit liberals & wire tap reporters' phones.
anim8rfsk
Jun 17, 2018, 11:14:59 PM6/17/18
to
In article <3M-dneVp-du8e7vG...@giganews.com>,
Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/27/jan-smithers-newsweek-teens-issue-4576
72.html
Good thing she's pretty.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sHdIhtuqhZk/S6Wmm2FC15I/AAAAAAAACK0/nNJ_51ABTRo
/s1600/jansmithers.jpg
or was. Now she looks like Lindsay Wagner's mother.
http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/embed-lg/public
/2016/05/11/0510teensjansmithers04.jpg
--
Join your old RAT friends at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1688985234647266/
Ubiquitous <web...@polaris.net> wrote:
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/27/jan-smithers-newsweek-teens-issue-4576
72.html
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sHdIhtuqhZk/S6Wmm2FC15I/AAAAAAAACK0/nNJ_51ABTRo
/s1600/jansmithers.jpg
or was. Now she looks like Lindsay Wagner's mother.
http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/embed-lg/public
/2016/05/11/0510teensjansmithers04.jpg
--
Join your old RAT friends at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1688985234647266/
A Friend
Jun 17, 2018, 11:25:29 PM6/17/18
to
In article <anim8rfsk-762F3...@news.easynews.com>,
I saw her once at Disneyland, back in 1980 or so. She was eating a
popsicle. Make of this what you will.
anim8rfsk <anim...@cox.net> wrote:
> Good thing she's pretty.
> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sHdIhtuqhZk/S6Wmm2FC15I/AAAAAAAACK0/nNJ_51ABTRo
> /s1600/jansmithers.jpg
>
> or was. Now she looks like Lindsay Wagner's mother.
> http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/embed-lg/public
> /2016/05/11/0510teensjansmithers04.jpg
She turns 69 in a couple of weeks. She looks fine.
> Good thing she's pretty.
> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sHdIhtuqhZk/S6Wmm2FC15I/AAAAAAAACK0/nNJ_51ABTRo
> /s1600/jansmithers.jpg
>
> or was. Now she looks like Lindsay Wagner's mother.
> http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/embed-lg/public
> /2016/05/11/0510teensjansmithers04.jpg
I saw her once at Disneyland, back in 1980 or so. She was eating a
popsicle. Make of this what you will.
Adam H. Kerman
Jun 17, 2018, 11:57:05 PM6/17/18
to
shawn
Jun 17, 2018, 11:58:25 PM6/17/18
to
On Sun, 17 Jun 2018 20:14:51 -0700, anim8rfsk <anim...@cox.net>
wrote:
Interesting.. They are both the same age but Smithers looks much older
than Wagner.
wrote:
than Wagner.
RichA
Jun 18, 2018, 12:14:56 AM6/18/18
to
She was always hotter than overrated Loni Anderson.
A Friend
Jun 18, 2018, 4:49:33 PM6/18/18
to
In article
<super70s-4E17C3...@reader02.eternal-september.org>,
> That was probably before she met her future husband though, not after
> they divorced.
Early on, Jan was married to an actor named Kipp Whitman for about a
year. They divorced in 1972. She went with Beckley during the early
'80s. She married Brolin in 1986. They divorced in 1995.
<super70s-4E17C3...@reader02.eternal-september.org>,
super70s <supe...@super70s.invalid> wrote:
> > Smithers met her former husband, Brolin, on the set of Hotel, an '80s
> > prime-time drama from Aaron Spelling
>
> Seems like I remember hearing she used to date Gerry Beckley of America.
> > Smithers met her former husband, Brolin, on the set of Hotel, an '80s
> > prime-time drama from Aaron Spelling
>
> That was probably before she met her future husband though, not after
> they divorced.
Early on, Jan was married to an actor named Kipp Whitman for about a
year. They divorced in 1972. She went with Beckley during the early
'80s. She married Brolin in 1986. They divorced in 1995.
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