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Love Blossoms in Outer Space
Catacombs Reference Library
by Cecil Smith, Los Angeles Times, 8 September 1976. See also Mission on the Moon in England by Cecil Smith, 17 June 1974.
Once when Lew Grade, the British impresario, was downhearted about a project, his wife Kathy said to him: "Why don't you go to America and sell something?" Which is exactly what he did, according to a new profile of the producer in Punch. Lew Grade has been selling things to America since the days of Robin Hood and Secret Agent. One of the things he sold lately was the six-part life of Christ, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring practically everybody, which will be shown on NBC next Easter season. A cohort said that sale makes Grade the world's greatest salesman-- "to sell Jesus Christ to General Motors!"
Perhaps the most flamboyant of the American sales of Lew Grade -now Lord Grade- is the science- fiction series Space 1999. It's reputed to be the most expensive TV series ever made- and, judging by those spectacular effects in space created and produced by Brian Johnson, one of the special effects experts on 2001: A Space Odyssey, it undoubtedly is. Nonetheless, the series was rejected by the networks and is an off-network syndicated show (locally on Channel 9). Its success reported inspired the boom in syndication.
It goes into Year 2 (not, surprisingly, called Space 2000) as as of Sept. 25 as a Saturday night weekly show, and, from the preview chapter Channel 9 gave us a couple of weeks ago, one of the more spectacular things about this second year is Catherine Schell as a creature called Maya from a far planet. Rescued from her evil father, she joins Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) and Dr. Russell (Barbara Bain) and the other Alphans on the space ship Eagle hurtling through distant galaxies. Newcomer Maya is not only an exotic female but one capable of molecular transformations, turning herself at will into anything she likes a dolphin, a wolf, a dove, a python, etc.
Shortly after the preview appeared, Miss Schell made a flying trip to Los Angeles- tall and leggy in blue jeans, turning heads wherever she went. She didn't look a bit exotic without Maya's soaring brows and sweep of hair across the cheek. I wondered if it were difficult changing into all those animals and she said: "No, not usually. Occasionally, there'll be a problem with an angry panther. I think we did have quite a time turning me into a bee."
Brian Johnson, the young special effects genius, was with her. He reminded her she turns into lots of things in the forthcoming series, not just beasts and bugs and birds. "Things from other planets," she said. "Scaly things. Ugh!"
But that's a minor part of her performance, she said. "We're very much into romance this season," she said. "Maya has this thing going with Tony Anholt, another newcomer. Other crew members are involved with each other. Even Martin and Barbara- they find each other! I tell you it's a hotbed of sex up there. A veritable flying Peyton Place."
Ms. Schell says she's delighted to be aboard the series, that it's great fun. Though she's made several movies, including Return of the Pink Panther, another Lew Grade product, she's been mostly in television and she likes it.
She was born in Hungary, the daughter of Baron and Baroness Schell Von Bauschlott. The family fled the Communist invasion, came to this country and young Caterina grew up mostly in Washington, D.C., and Long Island. When she was a teenager, the family returned to Europe with her father heading the Munich office of the Voice of America.
"I never thought of acting until my two older brothers went off to the university but my parents told me they couldn't afford to send me," she said. "They said it didn't matter so much about me-I was a girl! I was so furious I told them: 'I'm not just a girl-I'm going to be an actress!"
Her work on Bavarian TV ("I played Americans") led to British films, beginning with Amsterdam Affair and On Her Majesty's Secret Service and television. Both Catherine Schell and Johnson flew here from London with bitter tales of the British drought-"Poor England. Always so green. Now it's burned brown-like Spain."
Their trip was a hurried one. The film crew was shooting around Maya while she was away. Johnson's staff of 14 was carrying on in a separate studio where the holocausts and explosions and galactic landscapes are constructed.
But after brief stops at New York and Boston, Johnson was flown to England by Concorde while Catherine followed by conventional jet-"You see who is the more important," she said.
A bright addition to the Space 2000 scene are the slinky costumes Maya wears. In fact, last year Barbara Bain was complaining about those sexless unisex uniforms worn by both male and female Alphas on the Eagle.
"But that's changed," said Catherine Schell. "Now in moments of relaxation around the lounge, the women on the crew wear what they like. Barbara has some very sexy outfits, one cut to the waist..."
No wonder romance is blooming in outer space.