COVER STORY : Where the Roles Are : As TV finds that women 35 and over make up a third of its prime-time audience, older actresses are getting more and better parts

Julie Andrews makes no bones about why, at age 55, she’s making her first TV movie, a drama called “Our Sons” about AIDS and prejudice airing next month on ABC: “I don’t think that many scripts come across your desk--a good role for an actress. In any given year.”

“Over a certain age,” chimes in her co-star, Ann-Margret, 49.

“How many times does a wonderful whopping good role come across your desk?,” Andrews emphasizes. “Not that often.”

Ann-Margret laughs. “For a woman over 25.”

She should know: After two Oscar nominations in 40 films ranging from “Tommy” and “Carnal Knowledge” to “Middle Age Crazy,” Ann-Margret has become one of the most marketable and respected actresses on television. She’s been nominated for Emmy awards for each of the three TV movies she’s done so far--a dying mother of 10 in “Who Will Love My Children?,” Blanche Du Bois in “Streetcar Named Desire” and a society wife in “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” opposite Claudette Colbert. Although Ann-Margret has done several features between her TV roles (including “Twice in a Lifetime” and “52 Pick-up”), she indicates that the TV roles have been meatier.

Andrews has noticed. “It made her the hottest woman in TV,” she said. “She can pick and choose and not have to (settle).”

While there is no hard line drawn in the sands of an actress’ career, movie roles diminish for women as they get older--say, 40-something. But TV movies-of-the-week and miniseries-- if an actress chooses to do them--can fill the vacuum. Both Andrews and Ann-Margret represent what is fast becoming a rather long line of actresses--including Angela Lansbury, Lynn Redgrave, Lee Remick, Jill Clayburgh, Ellen Burstyn, Jessica Tandy and, soon, Jessica Lange--who have essentially gone from theatrical movies to made-for-TV movies, or go from one medium to the other, wherever the better roles are.

During the upcoming May ratings sweeps, the networks continue to follow this easy dictum: More women than men watch TV. Women like to watch women on TV. And network executives know that women apparently relate to strong actresses in strong women’s roles. So that is what they’re showing them. (See article, Page 86.)

To a degree, Andrews, who won an Oscar for her film debut in “Mary Poppins” and was nominated again the next year for “The Sound of Music,” has been sheltered against the paucity of meaty movie roles by her husband, producer Blake Edwards, who made “Darling Lili” (1970) and six of the nine movies she’s done since, including “Victor/Victoria” (1982), which got Andrews her third Oscar nomination.

“I just think that the (movie) industry to a great degree is about beauty and youth,” Andrews says. “Generally people would prefer to see youth. Youth would prefer to see youth, and that seems to be where the money is. . . .”

But, she said, “in TV, there does seem to be more opportunity for anybody, more chances . There’s more product. I’m amazed, just talking to the crew, you suddenly realize there’s just a ton of stuff out there. . . .”

Television, after all, has the audience. Consider the numbers. In January, during prime time, 45.4 million women tuned in as opposed to 38.2 million men--or 56% vs. 44%.

Of the entire January audience, according to Nielsen figures, nearly 20% were women 50-plus, 13% were women 18-34 and 12% women 35-49; among men, 15% were 50-plus, 12% were 18-34 and 11%, 35-49. Or, 58% were 35-plus.

Ages of Movie Audiences

According to a study done for the Motion Picture Assn. of America in July, 1990, admissions to movie theaters for the previous 12 months showed that 56% of audiences were between the ages of 12 and 29, while 44% were over 30. Or three-quarters of the audience was under 40.

In the 12 months ending in July, 1990 there were 504.2 million female admissions (the purchase of an individual ticket) and 465.5 million male admissions, though in the previous year the numbers are almost reversed--576.3 million males vs. 454.4 million females. (The report noted that women were simply going to movies more often.)

As for moviegoers, going at least once in the previous 12 months, there were an even 68 million each, male and female, in 1990; in 1989 there were 66.4 million males vs. 64 million females.

In that period, two out of three moviegoers, or 67%, were under 40.

“The movie business has said quite often, ‘Gee, men tend to control what kind of movies a couple goes to, so we want to capture that audience,’ ” notes Lisa Weinstein, producer of the movie “Ghost.” “. . . But when you’re dealing with people sitting in their house . . . women control the TV set as much as men do.”

According to Deborah Aal, an executive producer of NBC’s “A Different World” who was supervising producer on ABC’s landmark movie on incest, “Something About Amelia” in 1984, the nature of the medium itself promotes a kind of programming women tend to watch. “It plays in your living room, and there’s no darkened theater in which to suspend disbelief. You can’t escape your own reality. Movies are much more of a fantasy world. Television at least makes an effort to imitate everyday reality.”

“By and large made-for-TV movies and miniseries appeal to the female audience,” says David Poltrack, senior vice president for planning and research at CBS. “On Sunday night with ’60 Minutes’ and ‘Murder She Wrote,’ we own the upper-socioeconomic, 35-plus (heavily female) audience. When we make made-for-TV movies, we actually make movies for that time period, and we’re looking for movies with (that) appeal, particularly female appeal. . . .”

As network executives point out, advertisers look for audiences with a concentration of women aged 18 to 49 who buy the household products. At the same time, with the graying of the population and people marrying later, the audience they’re seeking has also been expanded to women aged 25 to 54.

“It is not that common that you will see an obvious male-appeal made-for film,” explains Alan Wurtzel, senior vice president for marketing and research services at ABC. “The reason that sports is so important to certain advertisers and why they pay a premium is that that’s the one kind of program element guaranteed to get men.”

Ruth Slawson, NBC’s senior vice president, miniseries and motion pictures for television, says that “women tend to commit to a two-hour or four-hour evening or two evenings of material. At least for us, specifically on Monday nights, we certainly do counter-program against (ABC) football. So we tend to at least have 50% of our programming more geared for women, and therefore the roles are there.”

The networks are also focusing on made-for-TV movies in order to compete with cable and videocassettes. In 1982-83, NBC did 17 movies of the week. In 1989-1990, they did 37 movies and five miniseries. This season NBC is airing 40 movies and four miniseries.

Cable Another Outlet

Ironically, cable itself has provided an outlet for older actresses. Consider Marsha Mason on HBO in “The Image”; Faye Dunaway in “Silhouette” and Diane Ladd in “The Lookalike” on USA Network, and on TNT: Faye Dunaway in “Cold Sassy Tree,” Sally Kirkland in “Heat Wave,” and Vanessa Redgrave in “A Man for All Seasons,” “Orpheus Descending” and, most recently, “Young Catherine.”

In July Katharine Ross, who starred in “The Graduate” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” will be featured on TNT’s “Conagher” and in early 1992 Julie Cristie will appear for TNT in “The Railway Station Man.” In December Talia Shire will appear on HBO with Jack Lemmon in “Getting There.” Next Saturday night, Showtime features Barbara Hershey in “Paris Trout,” based on the 1988 National Book Award-winning novel by Pete Dexter.

Television is more “user-friendly” to women actresses, notes Women in Film’s executive director Harriet Silverman, but how much more is still a question. According to a recent Screen Actors Guild study, while 71% of 9,440 feature roles in 1989 went to men, “television programming is only somewhat better,” with 35.4% of 39,161 roles going to women.

Lumping TV and feature roles together, the report added that “the situation for women over 40 is very bleak with only 8.8% of all film and TV roles available to them.”

A recent National Commission on Working Women/Women in Film study that did not include characters in TV movies and miniseries showed that 43% of roles on prime-time series are women. But the “number of women drops off dramatically” at age 40, the study noted, with 20% of men and 11% of women in their 40s. Only 5% of female TV characters, and 7% of male characters are in their 50s. With rare exceptions such as Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher on “Murder She Wrote,” the report added, “most women over 60 play mother and grandmother roles.”

Allen Sabinson, ABC’s executive vice president, motion pictures for television and miniseries, notes that “with the exception of the Barbra Streisands and the Meryl Streeps and the Chers, (actresses) are finding the only roles available for them (are) as the third and fourth leads, sometimes in good films, more often than not in just sort of mass entertainment material. And what TV can represent is serious drama with terrific roles, and frequently with some degree of social conscience.

“One can go with one’s head held up high to almost anyone,” he adds. “You simply can’t do that with the male stars. Bruce Willis and Tom Selleck and Robin Williams . . . there isn’t anything that we can offer those people.”

As Sabinson concedes, pay and other perks are better in features. According to the Motion Picture Assn., the average cost of a feature movie to make and release is $27 million. Notwithstanding ABC’s gargantuan $110 million, 32-hour “War and Remembrance” that aired in November, 1988, and May, 1989, a two-hour TV movie generally gets made for under $3 million.

The Actresses Talk

“We don’t have to be a bankable proposition to make it on TV,” says Angela Lansbury. “In movies we have to be big box office otherwise they can’t raise the money. So luckily we’ve been afforded many, many more opportunities in television.

“It didn’t used to be that way in the ‘40s,” adds the actress who came up during that era when stars like Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck outdrew men. “The world changed tremendously after World War II, and with it women kind of lost their mystique.”

However on TV “the home audience is made up of a huge volume of older people, and they appreciate and thoroughly enjoy seeing a woman of their years who’s out there doing it,” says the 65-year-old actress. “Living it, and being a vital, healthy, liberated, opinionated, fair, honest, just person. That, “ notes Lansbury “is the truth behind the success of ‘Murder She Wrote.’ ”

Lansbury, who has had three Oscar nominations as best supporting actress (“Gaslight,” 1944; “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” 1945; “The Manchurian Candidate,” 1962) and four Tonys for best actress in a musical, is hardly one to gripe. Though her movie career wound down in the 1970s, she has no regrets. “Absolutely not, good gracious no! Luckily I had a very strong movie career until the time I sort of stopped taking movies . . . and after that, I went into the theater, had a very successful theatrical career into my 50s. So it didn’t stop me from plying my craft.”

Lansbury, who had done live television on CBS’ “Playhouse 90” and NBC’s “Ford Television Theater” when she was in her early 30s, began on TV again in her late 50s with such TV movies as “Little Gloria, Happy at Last” on NBC in 1982; in 1989 she had the role of Penelope on ABC’s “The Shell Seekers.” “I just loved the fact that I was playing a woman absolutely my own age, who came from my own background.”

After “Murder She Wrote” ends its run, Lansbury says she intends to do more TV movies. And as a result of the success of “Murder She Wrote,” she now has “a three-picture deal” with the Hollywood Pictures division of Disney.

Lee Remick traces the decline in important roles for women to the late ‘60s. “Those various phases that movies have gone through such as the (Paul) Newman-(Robert) Redford buddy-buddy movies got rid of us ladies for quite a while,” she says with a laugh. “Wonderful movies, and I adored every bit of them, but they did put us out of business. . . .”

The actress, who began in theater as a dancer and worked in live television theater on “Playhouse 90” and “Studio One,” starred in 28 feature films including “The Long Hot Summer” (1958) “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959) and “Days of Wine and Roses” (1962), which brought her an Oscar nomination.

Second Career

She, too, went on to a second career on television, making nearly as many TV movies and miniseries as she had features. So far they number 25 including “Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill,” in the title role of Winston Churchill’s American-born mother in a 7-part series for PBS in 1975; “Ike: The War Years” on ABC in 1979 as Kay Summersby, the general’s wartime driver and close companion, and in the role of Frances Bradshaw Schreuder on “Nutcracker: Money, Madness and Murder” on NBC in 1987. She’s had five Emmy nominations.

“I’ve been blessed with really wonderful roles in both (movies and TV), I really have,” Remick says. “And I’ve always liked to jump around and do different kinds of roles in different media. ‘Jennie,’ that stands out. ‘Haywire’ (as) Margaret Sullavan. First of all she is crazy, which is always fun to play, interesting to play, and then ‘Nutcracker,’ another crazy. It’s much more fun than the lady next door.”

Remick, 55, who has been battling kidney cancer for nearly two years, hopes to be filming a TV movie this summer for ABC--”a melodrama. I don’t dare” talk about it, she laughs, “because that’s a jinx.” She’s using a cane these days, and “I could do it with the cane. That’s the point of having that come across.”

“I think I’ve probably had some of my better roles on television--television or the stage in my case,” says Lynn Redgrave, 48, who recently starred opposite her sister Vanessa Redgrave in ABC’s remake of the 1962 movie, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Redgrave considers that “my very best role that I’ve had probably, ever, in any medium . . . a towering role.

“I haven’t had wonderful roles on film,” Redgrave adds. “I had a wonderful role, ‘Georgy Girl’ (1966, which got her an Oscar nomination for best actress) but that was when I was very young at the height of England’s sort of swinging ‘60s.” She doubts whether she could have gotten to play “Baby Jane,” had it been remade as a feature.

“No, I probably couldn’t because, at the moment, I’m not one of those handful of women who are bankable on movies. . . . Only the ones that we all see: Cher, Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, well, Shirley MacLaine. . . . And then there is a whole little tiny handful of the same people. Right now Olympia Dukakis is the mother of choice for all films, and great for her. . . . There’s a tiny handful of leading women followed by the tiny handful of supporting roles, and then there are the young ones coming up. They’re always pushing on up and how long they stay there is another matter but it all comes around.

“I constantly am grateful for the fact that I’ve been a professional actress for 29 years,” Redgrave adds. “And I’m still here, and people are still asking me to work and I’m still getting to play great roles. I’m not coming in with the tray saying, ‘The dinner’s served.’ ”

Hit of the Season

The most successful TV movie this season was Hallmark Hall of Fame’s “Sarah, Plain and Tall” on CBS starring Glenn Close in the title role. It drew a 23.1 rating, which means that on Feb. 3, the night it aired, it was seen in 21.5 million households--or by nearly 33 million people. (“Sarah” drew an even higher rating than NBC’s “Cheers,” TV’s top-ranked series, which from Sept. 17 through Feb. 24, averaged a 21.8 household rating.)

Feature films rarely attract that size audience. Movies that gross $100 million--and bring in an estimated audience of 20 million--are considered major draws.

And yet for some actresses, there is still something a bit diminishing about the small screen. Whether identification with TV was the primary factor--or whether age itself had something to do with it--several major actresses declined through their representatives to be interviewed. Says the agent of a major actress who has done TV movies: “She doesn’t want to single herself out. It’s like being a victim. Women aren’t getting the movie roles but we’re also taking a lot of aggressive steps to change that. . . . All of them want to do movies. It’s more prestigious in their minds.”

Julie Andrews also talks about prestige--and perks. “Our Sons” is a prestige TV project--it was written by William Hanley (“Something About Amelia;” “The Attic: the Hiding of Anne Frank”), directed by John Erman (“The Last Best Year of My Life,” “The Attic,” “An Early Frost”) and produced by Robert Greenwald, who also produced “In the Custody of Strangers and directed “The Burning Bed.”

Andrews plays elegant Audrey Grant, who heads her late husband’s fashion business and owns an imposing San Diego beach house. Ann-Margret is Luanne Barnes, a waitress who lives in an Arkansas trailer park. Under ordinary circumstances, the pair never would have met--except that their sons have been sharing a life for several years. And now one of them is dying of AIDS.

But the lifestyle of TV production has clearly required an adjustment from features.

“You have so little time (on TV). And it’s kind of a challenge, kind of stimulating to see whether you can survive,” Andrews says. “On any movie, on any day, you probably wouldn’t be asked to work more than 12 hours. And this one you were going 16, 17, 18 hours a day so 18 days’ work felt like 3 1/2 months exhaustion.

“I had no illusions as to what I was in for,” Andrews adds. “Actually there were perks, and not perks. I mean the later you got in in the evening, the later call you had next day. It was Monday mornings that got me--to get up at 4, to leave at 5, to be in makeup at 6, and have people plastering your eyes. . . .”

But it’s the role that counts. Andrews says that in features she’s usually sought out for “something terribly sweet, and I’m much older now. I (want) to get my teeth into something stronger. As you hopefully mature, you do look for things that kind of stretch you and test you.”

“I’ve done a lot of different kinds of (feature movie) characters,” says Ann-Margret. “I just don’t want to do the same one again.”

Each of Ann-Margret’s TV movies have been directed by John Erman, starting in 1983 with “Who Will Love My Children?”

“I can’t believe that John asked me to do that. . . . He said it was the strength he saw in me that he wanted for that movie,” says the actress. “Nobody would ever think of me for that (role) in a feature.”

‘We’re All Scrambling’

However, Andrews cautions that on TV, too, “you could be doing a lot of silly product, and it’s all pumped up, pumped up, a lot of bumph . ... And (movies) are getting a little better. I mean look at Shirley (MacLaine), look at Meryl (Streep), look at Jane Fonda. We’re all scrambling about and trying to generate our own product.”

To that end Andrews has formed her own company, Greengage Productions; Ann-Margret has Ann-Margret Productions. “Women of a certain age--you have to buy a book if you want to do it,” says Ann-Margret.

“I have an awful lot,” says Andrews. “I figure if you throw enough against the wall one of them’s going to hit.”

And now with “Our Sons,” there’s the prospect of other TV roles.

One scene is being played in a smoky clubroom where Audrey Grant (Andrews) sits talking to her son James (played by Hugh Grant). It is toward the end of the movie and Audrey is telling him how she felt when she found out he was gay. With self-deprecation, she describes herself as “Sophisticated Mother, Woman of the World taking it all in stride and falling flat on my face when no one was looking. . . .”

“Cut! Excellent,” said director Erman in short order.

“It was, wasn’t it,” agreed Julie Andrews. She said it with pride and self-assurance, and without the hint of a question in her voice.

Janet Lundblad of the Times’ Editorial Library contributed to research on this article.