HARMON: A LOT TO SMILE ABOUT

Mark Harmon smiles a lot when he talks. You get the impression he knows something you don’t. And one thing he does know is that the Carl Reiner movie “Summer School” in which he stars has gotten off to a good start.

Reason enough to smile.

Not only is it Harmon’s first comedy, it also is his first starring role in a theatrical film.

“People seem surprised to find me doing comedy,” he said the other day. “Maybe I’m naive but I always thought the term actor meant you were supposed to try everything.”

That’s what he wants to do. And perhaps because he was a relative latecomer to acting, having first made his name as a UCLA football star, he’s anxious to crowd a lot in quickly.

Clearly, with his cut-glass good looks, blue eyes and stay-bright smile he could spend his days slaving away in the TV salt mines with great success (he’s done his share--”Flamingo Road,” “St. Elsewhere”).

But he’s more ambitious than that. TV is fine but he wants movies as well--and theater.

To this end he set aside four months next year to appear in “Bus Stop,” which Marshall Mason will direct at the Ahmanson. (It opens Feb. 11.)

“Last year Marshall suggested I might go to New York to do ‘Picnic’ there for him,” Harmon said. “I didn’t think that was right for me and said no. Now this has come along. Marshall thinks it’s (William) Inge’s best play and I agree.”

Harmon has already chalked up some good credentials on stage. Two years ago he appeared in Bill Davis’ play “Wrestlers” at the Cast, and he spent six months in Toronto in “Key Exchange.”

“I need to stretch myself,” he said. “To try everything. Sometimes I think back to my days in acting class when we were being taught how to play Chekov, which was fine, when my main concern at the time was trying to make my stuff in ‘Love Boat’ believable.

“When I was 17 my focus was on being an athlete. When that came to an end, I did all sorts of things--carpentry, selling shoes. It took me two years to realize just how much I wanted to be an actor.

“I did everything on TV. If they wanted some guy to swim across the pool to kiss the pretty girl, I did it. If they wanted someone to deliver flowers, I did it. That went on for three years. One day Ron Howard asked me, ‘How badly do you want it (to be an actor)?’ ‘A lot,’ I said. That’s still true.”

He got his first movie role in 1978 in “Comes a Horseman”--playing James Caan’s ranching partner. He got an Emmy nomination for playing a World War II amputee in “Eleanor and Franklin.” He won fine notices as mass murderer Ted Bundy in NBC’s four-hour “The Deliberate Stranger.” He appeared in several episodes of “Moonlighting” last season as Cybill Shepherd’s brief love interest.

Try everything, he believes. So he does.

“I got ‘Summer School’ because Carl Reiner saw me in ‘The Deliberate Stranger’ and then saw me on a TV talk show promoting it,” Harmon said. “He realized I didn’t take myself too seriously--I guess I was laughing a lot--and sent me the script. The fact that he had confidence in me gave me a lot of confidence in myself.”

Next month he leaves for Philadelphia to make “Stealing Home” with Jodie Foster.

“The title page says, ‘A family tragedy with jokes,’ ” he said. “It’s a great script.” Harmon plays a man who learns that Foster has died and willed him the “honor” of disposing of her ashes.

Soon, too, he hopes to find time to produce the Kirk Kilgour story for CBS. He has the rights to the story of the volleyball great crippled in a freak accident in 1975. Kilgour now coaches and inspires from a wheelchair.

“That’s one I really want to do,” he said, “the story of how a man triumphs over his injuries. As I tell people, if he were here right now you’d actually forget he was in a wheelchair.”

Clearly, Harmon, who is married to actress Pam Dawber, likes driving himself hard. But does he have to? Surely his three-year contract as spokesman for Coors pays a lot of bills. (The contract, up this year, is reportedly worth $2 million.)

“That’s been great, of course,” he said, “though I didn’t sign with them just because they offered me a lot of money. I saw it as a chance to be myself on the screen, something I’d not been offered before. But as I said, I came into this business to act, and that’s what I want to keep on doing.”

Next February, he knows, a lot of people will go to the Ahmanson to see him because they liked him in “St. Elsewhere” or “Summer School.” Why they go is not important to him--that they like his work is very important.

“I love acting,” he said. “I really love what I do. I didn’t like selling shoes very much. . . .”